


Try Again, and Again, and Again

by melchixr



Series: A Life in Your Shape [2]
Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 2000s, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Break Up, Cheating, Ernst is a drop-out artist in New York in a committed relationship, Exes, Grief/Mourning, Hanschen shows up and brings back old memories, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, New York City, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Repression, Sequel, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2020-10-07 21:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 47,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20459630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melchixr/pseuds/melchixr
Summary: “Why are you telling me this?” I scoffed and turned to face him again, taking in his flushed face in the lamplight.“I decided to stay in this city.”“Why?”“Because I knew you were here somewhere.”More silence. This time, I found myself staring at Hanschen's shoes, the words I wanted to say caught in my chest before I turned to get back into my building. “I wish you found me sooner.”And then I closed the door behind me, making sure it was shut tight and I didn’t see his face before I left. Because I wouldn’t have wanted to go.-SEQUEL to A Life in Your Shape--Title from the song "Pink In the Night" by Mitski-





	1. Chapter 1

“3...2...1… HAPPY NEW YEAR!” 

The whole bar exploded into cheers, celebratory screams coming from every direction as I contently clinked my beer with Martha’s. Sitting at the overflowing bar, she and I nudged a few revelers aside to lean closer to each other. “Happy new year, Martha,” I said in what felt loud but sound like nothing more than a whisper.

Nodding, Martha responded in a voice so fragile, I had to read her lips and assume she said, “Happy new year, Ernst.”

Over the speakers lining the stage, a little chuckle dominated the cheers. “God, guess that’s 2002, huh? Has the world ended yet?” Max chuckled, his fingers fumbling and strumming a few hesitant strings on his guitar. Still looking down at his shoes, he continued. “Also, uhh… Happy twenty-fifth to my very talented boyfriend, Ernst.” A shy hand gestured out to me, followed by the turns of dozens of head crowding around me. “So this song's for you, Old man. Also for the year two-thousand and two, I guess.” 

He nodded over to Ilse. Tall and statuesque, her long pale arms reaches down to the giant bass hanging around her broad shoulders, plucking away a fast paced bassline. 

I nodded graciously at the stranger looking at me, shouting out birthday wishes to someone they had never seen before. I had begged Max all day not to call me out during the concert. But looking up at his shy, flushed pink face, I could forgive him. Strands of poorly dyed black hair fell into his forehead when he looked up, flashing a quick smirk in my direction before messing with the pedals at his feet and joining Ilse with his guitar. 

The chords were celebratory and fast for a moment or two before halting so Max could whine into the mic, “Oh, honey, with that face you know what you can get.” Then another series of manic chords.

“That’s so cute I’m gonna vomit,” Martha said, barely above the music. I had to turn to face her, blocking out Max’s singing, which was half whimper, half actual singing and much more aggressive than what one would imagine his little body could hold. 

“Then hurl your heart out,” I chuckled, taking another sip of my drink. I hadn’t been drinking enough to make the crowd tolerable though. The whole place, a shitty dive-bar in the East Village similar to all the other grungy bars around the neighborhood. Sweaty, angsty, punk rock wannabes bumped around on all sides of Martha and I, demanding drinks, rocking to the music, and yelling to their friends about better bars that they should go to. 

I would join them in getting the hell out of there if I wasn’t the roadie for the grungy noise makers crammed onto the small stage at the back of the room. I had been there since we set up at nine and began nursing ice waters and cheap beer shortly after that. Martha beside me, we looked like a couple that didn’t belong in the slightest. Both of us were just squares who had found ourselves in love with rock and rollers. In our silence, we spent the night in our boring poser tee shirts and jeans, people watching peacefully. 

“I’m gonna break my own heart if you hesitant, oh…” Max’s moan echoed through the cheap speakers. 

I felt the breath on my neck before I heard the man’s voice, deep and gritty, like sand on pavement. “That your boyfriend up there?”

I took another sip, keeping my eyes on the back wall, studying the bottles of booze. “Yep,” I sighed. I had this conversation so many times I didn’t even need to look at the guy to know he was white, angry, drunk, and probably balding. There was always someone like him when you’re gay and spend your time in shitty bars with shitty punk guys. 

“You’re queer?”

“No, we’re straight. We’re just two straight guys who happen to have gay sex every once in a while.”

I didn’t have to look. I heard his angry inhale. Suddenly, Martha butted in. Her voice was soothing, but rigid. “He’s just drunk,” She lied. “You should just go.”

The many’s body stomped away. Finally, I released my blank-face glare and looked to Martha. “Don’t let him hear you gotta girlfriend, Martie. He’ll go apeshit.”  
“Ernst, I’m from Missouri,” She glared at me over rectangular glasses. “I promise you, I know how to deal with those bastards and I know it’s by ignoring them.”   
“You’d think Manhattan would be better,” I muttered into my drink and prayed I would remain untouched until the end of the night.

This prayer was answered for the evening, I was left unbothered with my drink until Max muttered out a chuckled. “Thanks for coming.” At around two in the morning. The few people still in the bar left then, hoping to find another place to get ever more drunk. Then Martha and I rushed the stage. We knew our jobs and did them well, with Martha starting at Anna’s drumset while I handled taking apart the microphone. 

“How’d you like the show, babe?” Max asked, breathless and sweaty under the bar’s dim lights. He unplugged and put away his guitar, looking up at me every few moments to see my expression.

I saw his expectant smile and responded. “I think it was wonderful. I don’t care how many times I see the show, it’s good no matter what.”

“It was a long show tonight!” Ilse coo-ed over her shoulder as she closed the case for her bass. She stood and I noticed for the millionth time the nipple piercings poking out from under the thin, silk, vintage nightgown that she cut into a crop top. “Some stuff for the album.”  
“If the album happens,” Martha commented over her shoulder, aiding Anna in bringing out all the boxes and cases for her drum set. 

I noticed the fearful glance from Max and reached out, touching his shoulder and feeling his sharp, prominent shoulder blade beneath the old, beat up, denim jacket. “It’s gonna happen. Don’t worry about it.”

He shook his head, asking the bartender for another beer and packing up his pedals with hesitant anxiety. That’s all he did whenever anyone mentioned the album. All the hours he spent in the studio, all the nights spent bent over the desk writing lyrics. If the last year and a half of hard work didn’t pay off, I was afraid Max would go crazier than he already was. 

Once we managed to fully pack up Ilse and Martha’s van, we said our goodbyes. Hugging each other in the tiny back parking lot, we wished each other a happy new year. A few more birthday wishes and they were gone into the busy streets. We walked Anna the two blocks to the nearest subway station and then we were alone, me, Max, and the guitar case he lugged around at his side.

Even at three, the city was loud and alive, even more than usual. Sound and lights poured out of bars and clubs that lined the streets we walked. Groups of drunken celebrators crowded the sidewalks, making it hard to get back to our apartment without wading through gaggles of drunk girls screaming to their friends. 

But we made it home eventually, stumbling up the narrow stairs to our tiny, second floor studio. I flicked on the dim overhead light and threw my thick winter jacket onto the back of the loveseat we had crammed between my desk and the bed. Cupping my freezing hands to my mouth, I watched Max move silently around the corner to our cramped kitchen. Standing still, I listened as he fumbled around the kitchen for a few moments. “Hey, Max?”

No response. 

“Max?”  
I rounded the corner and saw him working to pull up the window in our kitchen. The ancient wood was always jammed into place no matter how many times we opened the window. Wordlessly, I stepped forward and helped him pull up the window enough so there was enough space to wriggle out onto the fire escape.

The opening wasn’t quite big enough for me, but I managed to follow him back out to the freezing night. We sat side by side, our legs tucked up to our chests with the fire escape creaking beneath us. 

“What’s up, Max?” I asked after a few moments of silence. He lit a cigarette and held it between shaking fingers. Four years of living in New York and he still hadn’t learned to dress for the cold. 

He blew out a plume of grey smoke. Beneath us there was an alley, with the light of a single street light illuminating his face. “I just feel like it’s not gonna work out, Ernst.”

“What is?”

He handed me a cigarette, holding out his lighter expectantly. “Just... I feel like shit’s not gonna work out.”

“The band is great, Max. You don’t need to worry about that,” I leaned into his flame and back out again. 

Max then shifted his small body against me, leaning his head on my shoulder and wrapping his arm around mine. I pressed my lips to the top of his head, my empty hand pressing fingertips into his thigh. “You really think so, babe?” He whispered. 

The sound of the street beside us faded in that moment. All I could hear was Max breathing, feeling his chest rise and fall against me. “Yeah,” I muttered. “I can tell it’s gonna be great for you.”  
“For us.”

“For us.”  
I took another drag and felt Max pull himself closer. Around us, the cold night air seemed to subside for a few moments and I felt the warmth of Max. Small and beautiful, I looked down to see the small smile across his pale face. He looks tired, like always, but he looks angelic. 

“We should get some sleep,” He muttered after a few moments of close silence. “It’s almost four A.M.”

“Ah shit,” I sat up and went to force the window open more. “I have a nine A.M. meeting!”

Max laughed a little and put out his cigarette on the fire escape railing. “For what? That rich person gallery?”

I nodded and attempted to wriggle myself back inside. Behind me Max let out an amused chuckle and shoved the window open a bit more. “God, you’re so fucking long. It’s like watching a daddy-long legs try to fit through a straw.”

Once I got inside, I made sure to turn around and punch Max in the arm before helping him in as well. “Hey, watch out! Precious cargo!” He laughed before sliding in with ease. I could help but kiss him there, pulling him up and against me so close I could feel his body practically become mine. 

“Hey,” He mused when we separated. “Happy seven year anniversary.”  
“Of what?” I asked, a bit confused. “We just celebrated six years in December, Max.”

He laughed, pressing his lips against mine again before saying, “Our first kiss, dumbass. New Years, nineteen-ninety-five.”

“And look how far we’ve come,” I gestured boldly around the tiny kitchen, stretching my arms out so my knuckles hit the wall on either side. “Isn’t it just glamorous?” 

Max didn’t reply, just sighed, reached up to run his fingers through my hair, and walked back to the living room, collapsing right there on the box spring and mattress we called a bed.


	2. Chapter 2

I woke up in a blurry haze, bright light pouring in from between the blinds. I rolled over, pressing drowsy lips against Max’s bare shoulder. Silently, he stirred beneath me. I pressed into the warmth of his back, wrapping myself around him like another blanket in the pile on our bed. 

“Morning, Maxie,” I whispered into his warm, pale skin. 

“Fuckin’...Mornin’....” He grunted after a few moments, his words muffled by the pillow. “It’s too early…”

I sighed and laid back down, completely willing to spend the morning wrapped around Max and falling in and out of sleep. I moved my hand up around Max’s chest, to feel his heart beat through my nervous fingertips. I was about to allow myself to fade back into sleep when I sat up suddenly. The glaring red alarm clock behind Max’s mess of hair read 8:35.

“Fuck!” I practically yelled before throwing myself from the bed, scrambling into the bathroom.

I splashed my face with water a few times and made a quick attempt of brushing my teeth when I heard Max’s sleepy voice from the other room call, “Ernst? What is it?”

“Meeting at nine!” I tried to say, but the words came out muffled around the toothbrush. He just grunted and watched from the bed as I ran to the closet and attempted to find something presentable. Kicking aside a pile of dirty clothing, I heard he phone ring from the kitchen. It rang for a few moments before clicking to the answering machine. My voice, sounding much more awake than I was now, echoed through our apartment. “You’re reached Max and Ernst. Leave a message!”

A beep and a familiar voice began singing over the crackling audio. “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday dear Ernst! Happy Birthday to you!” My Mom giggled, forcing me to smile even as I rummaged through my dresser in a panic. Sweetly, she continued. “Happy twenty-fifth, honey bee. Missing you out here. Call me when you get the time, okay? Have a great day! I love you to bits and pieces! Give my love to Max too. Call me back!”

The message stopped and Max sighed, his voice barely audible. “Your Mom is so cute.”

“I know!” I grunted and pulled on a wrinkled pair of slacks. Desperately, shaking hands managed to button the only button up I owned. “She’s too cute. It’s a lot.”  
“I miss her,” He stretched out, nonchalant. “Summer was nice. We need to go see her more often.”

I just nodded in agreement and cotinued in my panic. No shave, no hair brushing, no tie. No time. I barely even managed to put on the right shoes. From the bed, big blue eyes watched me with amusement. “Go on!” I laughed. “I must be really entertaining, huh?” 

I pulled on the thick peacoat my Mom send me when I first moved to New York. After she was done being mad at me, of course. That week where she was mad at me for dropping out was the worst week of my life. But after she forgave me and sent me the coat, I was assured that she would always be in my corner, even if I was following my dream in being a broke, grungy artist aimlessly roaming Manhattan. 

“Knock ‘em dead, Ernie,” He called after me once I managed to get my stuff together and shuffle toward the front door. 

Fliegentod wasn’t as mad as she could be when I showed up ten minutes late for our meeting, my shirt half tucked and probably smelling and looking like hot garbage. But she just smiled as she unlcoked the glass front doors for me. “I’ll assume you had a long night last night.” She giggled and stepped aside to allow me to enter the large, airy white room. 

The walls were lined with bright, bold modern art and scattered around the floor were strange avant garde statues that could have been mistaken for a hyperactive child’s nightmare. I took in the strange images, immediately comparing the works around me to the pieces I had shown to her and realized that this meeting was just going to be her telling me to fuck off.

“Yeah, I am so sorry!” The words fell from my moth as I tried to collect myself. “My uh… friend’s band had a show and I was helping out and…”

“It’s fine. I was young in New York, I know what it’s like. I’m surprised you showed up as soon as you did!” She walked deeper into the gallery, walking around the displays with pride. She was an older woman with an air of pride about her. Her large pinned up bun filled with shockingly white hair shone beneath the display lights. 

I had heard the name Ava Fliengentod everywhere ever since I started working in New York. Even us small scale, nobody artists heard of her. That anyone who made it to her gallery was bound to make it on the scene. There was a long list of now well known members of the modern art scene who got their break at a show in Glass House Gallery. 

That was because all the rich art collectors and socialities trusted Fliengentod. They trusted the weight of her name to their pretentious friends and her supply of young artists.

And I was absolutely not going to cut it. 

“Ernst,” She said, leading me up the spiral staircase leading up to her small office. There wasn’t much there. A desk, and a mobile of stained glass bouncing reflections coming from the morning light pouring in from the large windows. “I spent all week flipping through your portfolio. And your pieces are so unique.”

Oh. So it’s a no. 

“I haven’t seen anyone with skill similar to yours in years.”

Not saying that it’s good. 

“I stared at some of your paintings for a long time actually,” She said with a kind nod. “It’s intriguing. It really speaks.”

I was already biting back tears. She didn’t need to say anything else. 

The rest of the meeting was like any other. Her telling me that IF she and the members of the gallery council agree to show his work I MIGHT get to open with a gallery party. But that’s just if they think my work has a big pull. More than likely, my pieces MIGHT be put up silently to gauge if the public cares at all about anything I make. 

More than likely, I thought, I was going to get a ‘thanks for trying’ call the next day. This was all formalities but I could see on her face that the answer was bound to be no.

But still, I thanked her. I shook her hand, told her how much I appreciated her gallery and what she gives to the community. She nodded, she had heard this all before. I was just another no name she gave a shot.

The payphone I went to was a block away, filled with graffitti and smelling of piss, I couldn’t even make it home to use my own phone. There was a hopeless urgency filling my chest as I heard my Mom pick up on the other side. 

“Hey, Mom, it’s Ernst.”

“Ernst, honeybee!” She cooed. “Happy Birthday! And a happy new years too! How are you?”

Leaning against the wall of the payphone, I sighed. “Not too good, Mom.”

“Oh no…” She tisked into the phone, her voice still light and airy with a new hint of anxiety. I could practically see her shift to sit at the edge of her seat, the comfortable old dinig chairs that she would spend hours at, grading papers. “What’s wrong, Ernst? What happened?”

I wanted to tell her that I looked like an idiot in front of Ava Fliengentod. That I ruined my chances of being shown in Glass House. That I should probably just pack up and move back to Caifornia and be a faliure there. 

But I didn’t. I just rubbed my temple with my free hand and continued. “Nothing. Just an off day.”

She immediately set off, listing off in a stream of words reasons why she was proud of me, why I should be proud of myself, why I’m talented. I didn’t need to hear the words she was saying as much as I needed to hear how she said it, the love in her voice. How I could imagine her there, holding my head to her chest and feeling the warmth of her soft hands on my neck, rubbing little circles to soothe the pounding ache. 

“I love you, Mom,” I said, interrupting her monologue of love. 

There was a pause on her line, then, a chuckle. “I love you too, Ernie.”

  



	3. Chapter 3

“Who’s ready to fuckin’ party!” Max entered the apartment in a woolens storm. He set the paper grocery bags he was carrying on the floor and charged at the couch where I sat. With arms flung open, he tumbled on top of me, landing hard in my lap and pulling me into a bone crushing embrace.

“Good news?” I grunted beneath his weight. I reached up to give an unenthusiastic pat to his shoulder.

“The best news, Ernie!” He practically squealed, pressing his lips to mine before continuing. “They loved the demos so much. They’re signing us to a three album contract!” 

Another happy embrace. I forced a smile and kissed the side of his face, which was buried in my shoulder. “I’m so happy for you, Max.”

Without another word, he stood. His small body sprung up and bounced around the apartment with a vitality I had never seen in him before. And a smile that was so rare I wanted to soak it in like the sun. The Max I was used to was a much more lethargic, cynical, hopeless angst filled teenager in his twenties. But here he was, clear as day and beaming. “So I picked up some champagne to celebrate!” He picked the bags up off the ground. “Then we’re gonna meet up with Ilse and Anna for dinner and drinks.”

“Your idea of celebrating includes a lot of drinking.”

“Yours doesn’t?” He called from the kitchen, his voice quickly followed by the pop of the champagne cork. 

“Max,” I groaned and approached the doorway, watching his clumsy hands pour the bubbling, golden liquor into two of our plastic water cups. Not very glamorous but very us. “It’s three in the afternoon. You’re day drinking.”

“I’m getting day tipsy!” He held out one of the cups to me before suddenly stopping. He studied my face and his smile fell, his adorable dimples disappearing from pale cheeks. “What’s wrong, Ernst?”

When I didn’t respond, he set the cup on the counter and stepped closer to me, “Oh fuck, the meeting. How’d that go?” 

“Ah, it was fine, Max!” I attempted to smile, but probably ended up looking like I was grimacing. He shook his head.

“I know you too well, Ernst Robel. What’s wrong?” 

I sighed, picking up the cup from the counter and staring into the bubbling contents. “It’s just that Fliengentod didn’t seem to be a big fan. I know I didn’t get it.” I looked up quickly, hastily fixing a smile as I did. “But it’s fine, I didn’t get my hopes up. Thank God.” 

Max reached up to me, tilting my chin down with his thumb and his forefinger, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “I’m sure you got it, Ernst. You’re just overthinking it.”

I shook my head and raised the cup in a lackluster toast. “Today is about celebrating you, Max. Cheers.”

Max picked his cup back up hesitantly before adding, “My success is your success, Ernst. We’re still a team,” He smiled and raised his cup before stopping suddenly. “How about we go out with Ilse and Anna for lunch tomorrow and we get day wasted and have some gross, amazing, drunk sex?”

A genuine smile found its way to my face. “I wish you didn’t know me so well.” 

It didn’t take long for us to finish off the bottle Max had bought. By five we were stumbling down the stairs to run across the street to the liquor store, filling our baskets with enough alcohol to kill a man. The cheap stereo Max had bought freshman year blasted In Utero as loud as possible as we passed back and forth a bottle of red wine. 

“Never have I ever…” I took a long sip and held back a giggle. “Uhh…. Kissed a girl!”

Max pulled the bottle from my hand and drank from it like it were life and death. “What!” I shouted loud enough to get complaints from our neighbors.

Unable to hold back giggles, Max explained with dyed red lips. “I was trying really hard to at least be bisexual for a while. I made out with Stephanie Gunn.”

I grimaced at the thought, “Gross.”

“I know,” He pointed the bottle at my chest with confidence. “Never have I ever loved anyone other than you.”

He held the bottle out, as if expecting me to take it. When I didn’t, he chuckled with disbelief, “Ernst, you’re not allowed to lie.”

I shook my head, pushing the bottle away with my palm. “I’m not lying. I’ve never been in love with anyone else.”

“Hanschen mother fucking Rilow!” He sat up on his knees, towering over me for the first time ever. I just sunk lower into the love seat, shaking my head. His “gotcha” grin fell.

“That was a petty teenage crush taken too far,” I muttered. I had spent more time than I would have liked to thinking about Hanschen. Not long after I ran away, I had come to the conclusion that I craved to be loved so badly that I had fallen in love with him. “It was an only option kinda thing,” My drunken mind rambled. “Where else was I gotta find a queer kid? Especially because I didn’t know I was queer until I met him.”

Max propped his elbow up on the cushion beside my head, resting his head in his hand and staring down at me with his trademark intensity. “That’s gotta mean something. The guy that made you realize you were gay?”

“I mean, he was hot, believe me,” Max rolled his eyes and took another sip. “But no. I love Hanschen for inspiring me to run away, and give up on all of that upper class, white, American wet dream shit. I love that he drove me away from Faraday and into you.”

Max smiled, leaning down to rest his forehead against mine before saying in a whisper, “I love him for that too.”

And we were kissing. Messy and desperate, I pulled Max on top of me, my arms wrapped around his slim waist. I heard the third of the bottle of wine fall to the floor, but I couldn’t care less. All I had ever dreamed of having was in my arms, his freezing hands sneaking up underneath the fabric of my hoodie and sending

shocks through my body.

By the time the sun was setting, Kurt Cobain’s voice was aching through the speakers, wailing about Pennyroyal Tea, and Max was pressed to the mattress beneath me. We had fumbled our way to that point, our clothes scattered around us and our socks still on. The sheets were coming off at the corner of the mattress that Max was clinging to for dear life. Our mouths rarely separated, the kisses between becoming lazy and falling naturally aside to each other’s jaws and necks. 

That’s when the phone rang, forcing me to shake back to reality and pull away from Max , whimpering and writhing beneath me. “Ernst!” He hissed. “Let the machine get it…”

“You’ve reached Max and Ernst. Leave a message!”

But I ignored his pleas and sat up. “Ernst, you can just call back in the-“

“Hi Ernst, this is Ava-“

I scrambled to my feet and ran, naked and stumbling, into the kitchen. By some miracle I reached the phone without eating shit and picked up the phone, practically yelling into the receiver, “Hi, Ava? This is Ernst!”

“Oh, Ernst!” Fliengentod gasped on the other side. She chucked a bit before continuing, “Well, I just wanted to call and tell you that I just got done in a council meeting and there was a unanimous agreement to show your work at the gallery as a featured artist.”

The wind was immediately knocked out of me. It was like I had fallen asleep on the balcony and was awakened by hitting the concrete. I attempted to collect my thoughts and catch my breath when she spoke again , “Hello? Ernst?”

“That’s amazing!” I gasped when I found language again. “That’s incredible, thank you!”

“How about you come by tomorrow and we’ll sign the paperwork and discuss the pieces,” She sounded like she was smiling on the other side, amused. “And then we’ll hold an opening for you next Thursday. It will be wonderful.”

A few more thank your and exclamations of gratitude and she hung up. And I was suddenly aware of Max, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and his eyebrow raised. He had put on a pair of boxers, which was much more than I had done to cover up against the freezing air of the apartment. “I hope that was important.”

I smiled, throwing myself at him in the form of a crushing hug. “We need to celebrate!” 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no one: nothing  
my dorm wifi: aight, I better head out

The gallery wasn’t exactly full, but I was just thanking God it wasn’t empty. The wealthy socialites that Glass House was known to attract cane of course, walking around in their tailored suits and beautiful dresses that cost as much as last month's rent. They spoke to one another in hushed tones, wandering around the gallery with so much sincerity i could have thrown up. 

There were a few oddballs too. Other artists who arrived in dyed pink furs, go-go boots, and lime green pants. They seemed most at home in the gallery, speaking to one another about things much more complex and important than I could ever understand. 

Their strangeness eclipsed Max’s strangeness well. The man in corduroy pants and eye liner didn’t even turn heads when he was standing next to a woman with her hair wrapped in a diamond encrusted hair net and a guy with lipstick Xs on his button up over where his nipples would be.

“Hey, earth to Ernst,” Ilse’s voice brought my absent stare back to reality, looking over at her as she handed me a glass of high end wine. “Don’t get too caught up, dude. They really like your shit.”

I had been watching the council members in particular. All older, wealthy artists from the seventies who decided to open up their own gallery to bring peace and love to Manhattan. I had been introduced to all of them during the meetings leading up to the show, where they picked from my portfolio the pieces they thought worthy of being shown to the public. 

One of those pieces was my pride and joy. Lovingly giving the working title of ‘The Wire Mess’, it hung in the center of the galley. Recycled metal from wire hangers that I had spent what felt like a lifetime twisting and molding into shape, flowing forms intertwined. If you looked at it quickly, it just looked like nothing. But upon inspection a shoulder could be seen. A dip of a waist, the lonesome curve of fingertips, a mouth agape. Bodies, clinging to each other in their metal ecstasy.

But Max just called it “trash art”.

Bodies were everywhere tonight. Seeing a lot of my art all close together made me realize how obsessed I was with the human form. Huge, charcoal scribblings of the shadows of a pair of dancers, thick acrylic paintings of blood knuckles, hundreds of nails on a board with red yarn stringing between them, taking the shape of a woman. A few watercolor paintings of flowers broke up the body worship. But as the night progressed, I got more and more worried about seeming predictable.

“Thanks, Ilse,” I took the drink and tried not to chug it. Ilse, who was already pretty tall, could look me in the eye in her platform boots worn over torn fishnets. Very hooker chic. “I’m glad you’re staying sane because I’m not.”

She chuckled a bit at that and looked around the gallery. “If I’m more sane than you, you need immediate medical attention.”

Quiet nervous laughter. I would have been content, watching the crowd beside Ilse all night. But she spoke up again, this time pointing to a piece across the room. “Hey, that’s not Max, is it?”

I looked over to where she was pointing. In the far corner of the gallery, a large canvas sat propped against the wall. On it, a life sized scene of a man, golden skinned and adonis like, leaning to peer out an open window. Vines crawled up the side of the building and potted plants lined the window sill he stood in, with only the side of his face and his bare chest could be seen, two muscular arms propping him up in the mid-morning sun. I had seen this image in my mind so many times before I was compelled to paint it. No matter how hard I thought though, I could never see his face. So I painted him looking away, as if distracted by something just out of view. All that could be seen was a nose, a cheek, a jawline, and a messy head of blond hair.

“No, it’s not.”

“Then who is it?” She nudged my shoulders. Both of our eyes moved to Max, who was wandering around studying the crowd more than the art. “He’s your muse, ain’t he?”

She was right. Most of the other images of men could be traced back to him in some way. They had his small, button nose, or the mass of red hair he tried so desperately to cover up, or his narrow waist and shallow chest.

But the man in the window was the furthest you could get from Max.

“I saw a statue once…” I said, bringing the glass to my lips and breaking my stare.”Bernini, I think.”

She shrugged, content with my answer, and went back to watching the circus of culture. 

Our silence was broken by Fliegentod approaching, a gracious smile on her face and a beautiful woman close behind her. In a simple black smock dress, Fliengentod took my hand in hers. “Ernst, my dear,” She said, her voice filled with joy. “Isn’t tonight magical?”

“Yes, Ava, it is. I don’t know how I could thank you,” I pressed a kiss to the side of her face, beaming down at her. I knew if she was happy, things must be working out for the best. 

“Oh, I almost forgot. I have to introduce you…” She stepped aside, the young woman she was with stepping forward. “Ernst, this is Greta. Greta, this is Ernst Robel.”

She held out a dainty, white hand that seemed too precious for me to shake. “Pleasure to meet you, Ernst.”

She was gorgeous. Gay or not, I could recognize beauty when I saw it. Slim and young, she seemed to float in her tight black dress. A headcount of blond waves fell down around her face and down her back, framing a perfect smile. 

“Nice to meet you, Greta.”

She turned to Ilse, who seemed to be as transfixed as me. “And you are?”

“Ilse Neumann: known lesbian,” She said before raising her empty glass. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

And with that, she was gone, stomping off in her heels, leaning a bit of shock and scandal in her wake. Greta took a moment to collect herself before letting out a very proper nervous laugh. “A friend of yours, I assume?”

I nodded, “Yeah. She tends to be a bit… much.”

Greta shook her head, smiling still. “No, I love it! That’s why I come here in the first place.” She looked back up at me. “But I stay for the amazing artwork. And you are very talented, Ernst.”

“Oh, well thank-“

“And Greta has come to every opening the past year,” Fliengentod interjected. “And she has never once asked me to introduce her to the artist.”

“Well I’m flattered,” I watched the two women with weary eyes. From over their shoulders, I noticed Max looking over at us, his eyes curious. 

Greta continued, looking up at me with admiration. “I just wanted to ask if you ever considered renting your art, Ernst.” When I gave her a confused glance, she continued. “My fiancé is a lawyer and we’re having a party for the firm next weekend and I think your artwork would really be an amazing addition to the whole thing.”

I didn’t reply immediately. First of all, I was shocked at how much she fell into the stereotype of the wealthy, cultured, New Yorker. But once that subsided, I realized that this was how it happened. This was how names spread through the city, this was how an artist stops being a nobody. 

“That sounds amazing,” I grinned, breathless.

Greta nodded, pulling a small address book from her purse. “Oh, perfect! How should I get in contact with you?”

As I scribbled my name and number in her address book, I finally noticed that Max was now standing a few feet away, observing this all with “I knew this would happen” plastered on his expression. I smiled and shrugged at him helplessly. I could see in his eyes, wide and blue, pride that made my heart ache. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’m posting this chapter in public from my phone. I feel fifteen

It was awkward, dragging various pieces of art from Ilse’s van, parked on the curb, through the lobby of the high end SoHo apartments. Everyone seemed to stare as Ilse and I, both looking like the broke pieces of shit we were, as we made our trips to and from the elevator with our arms filled with canvases. 

Greta’s penthouse was immaculate. Everything was in shades of white and grey with large windows facing out to the New York skyline. People moved along the sidewalks like dots of dust below us, making me feel sick the more I looked out.

“I think it would be perfect right here!” Greta ordered to Ilse, who was pushing the wire statue towards the center of her living room. Greta’s interior designer seemed to forgo a coffee table for a large faux-fur white rug surrounded by slick, black couches and plush chairs. She and Ilse had man-handled the piece on top of this rug, in the way of everything. “What do you think, Ernst?”

I looked away from my sky-scraper daydream and nodded at the two women. “Yeah. Anywhere you want sounds good.”

Three thousand dollars just to rent my art for the evening, I didn’t care if she put up everything in closets and bathrooms. Three thousand dollars was enough for me to agree to anything. 

Rubbing her hands on her designer jeans, Greta chuckled. “Oh, Hans is just gonna love this! Ernst, can you bring me the others?”   
Sprung into action, I moved from the dining room to the living room, my arms full of some of the pieces Greta hand picked for her party. She seemed to be a fan of the bodies, choosing mostly painted shadows and charcoal outlines of the human-like shapes that always seemed to come to my mind. “Is Hans your fiance?” Ilse asked, her intense hazel eyes flicking from me to Greta. 

She nodded, taking the first canvas from me, an oil painting of two female forms laying in a blur of lush green grass. “Yes. He’s at work right now, or else I’d introduce you to him.”

Ilse nodded and went to work helping Greta hand up the art, the two discussing whether or not everything was level and whether it “fit the wall” before checking back with me. My response was always the same, looked great, looked good, looked fantastic. As many synonyms I could think of to say “whatever you want Greta”.

“This one if my favorite!” She practically squealed and lifted from my arms a large, wooden board. On it, I had nailed pieces of old wallpaper, like the wallpaper that had covered the walls of the house I had grown up in. And drawn on the wallpaper in charcoal, bones. A femur on one, a pelvis on the next, a skull on another.I made them at first as therapy, then realized that I almost liked the outcome. 

As Greta placed the board up on the wall above the fireplace, she nodded over to the painting of the man in the window she had placed in the dining room. “Besides that one. I like that one a lot.”

“Me too, it’s one of my favorites,” My voice came out small now that my arms were empty. 

Greta ushered us to the pristine, cleaning product scented kitchen, insisting that we “needed something to drink”. I felt a bit like the twelve year old boy who just mowed her lawn as she poured Ilse and I glasses of lemonade. But I took it graciously and listened to the two women talk beside me. You would have never expected the two to get along, especially because Greta was an interior designer who wore a cardigan and Ilse had a buzzcut and a shirt with ‘FUCK COPS’ written in sharpie. But the two could go on forever, giggling over the crazy things the downstairs neighbor did and all the tourists clogging the sidewalk. 

I smiled at their jokes and nodded in agreement, but I was never there. Ignoring my lemonade, I found myself studying the kitchen. The cookbooks on the counter, the fancy set of knives in the butcher block, the notes pinned to the door of the fridge. “Buy MILK!” “Call Julia” “PLANE TICKETS” Most of them in Greta’s pretty cursive lettering. But I almost recognized the handwriting on some of the yellow post-it’s. The short, squat, all capitalized letters looked familiar. Maybe it was like Max’s handwriting, I thought as my eyes glanced over the post it proclaiming “I LOVE YOU!” 

Then, my gaze fell on the dining room table. The shiny, dark wood was completely bare besides the vase full of white lilies and a thick, paperbound book. The reading glasses on top of it obscured the cover a bit, but after a moment of studying I could read the ornate lettering.

‘Edna St. Vincent Millay Collected Poems’

“Oh, God, I’m sorry about the mess,” Before I could think more on it, Greta descended on book, picking it up along with the circular reading glasses. “This is Hans’ stuff. He leaves his things everywhere.” 

My gaze followed Greta as she went into the living room to put the book back, my mind trying desperately to wash the image of Hanschen Rilow from my mind. What a coincidence, i told myself. What a strange coincidence. 

“Ernst?” Ilse whispered, her eyes worried. “You alright?”

I nodded and took a sip of lemonade. “Yeah… Just thinking.”

She nodded suspiciously and like that, my brain split like an atom. I saw Hanschen in snapshots. No memory was whole, all of them were broken apart by seven years of repression and wishing away every thought of him. But I knew these memories were of Hanschen. I saw the blanket on his bed that we would wrap ourselves in. I smelled his sweaters and felt the fabric against my cheek. I felt the cold of snow, of pebbles in my palm. I saw a bike, twisted and bent in the wrong direction. I saw his handwriting on notes, bringing poetry to my doorstep. I saw two one way train tickets. 

Then, reality returned. And I saw Ilse, staring at me like I had just spoken in tongues. Greta came back around the corner, her voice cheery, but dry. “How’s the lemonade?” 


	6. Chapter 6

Greta called the next day as Max and I enjoyed our morning coffee. Our mornings, of course, came around ten A.M., as Max got home from work at two in the morning. But he assured me that this week would be his last. ‘You can’t be a rockstar and a bartender’ I would joke every time he came home with aching feet and tequila spilled on his shirt. Now the record company they had signed to, a small indie studio in Brooklyn, had given him enough pay that he could afford to quit and put all of his focus towards the album.

And, towards brewing really strong coffee, which he drank black. Closest thing you can get to liquor in the morning, he claimed. He sat, sipping from the steaming mug with his feet up on the coffee table as the television quietly played Nickelodeon. 

Then the phone rang, forcing me to get up from my comfortable spot curled up beside Max and wander to the kitchen, where Greta told me that I could come by and pick up the art before noon, because she was having clients over. 

So I chugged the rest of my sticky-sweet creamer filled coffee and made my way to SoHo, hoping that if I took a taxi home, they wouldn’t mind me filling their trunk with my shitty art. 

There was no response for a few moments when I first knocked on the door. But after a brief pause, Greta opened the door. Her hair was in a mess of a bun and her small body was wrapped up in a warm looking, comfortable sweater. “ Ernst!” She giggled as I entered. “God, you were such a hit last night! The guys at the firm loved your work!”

“I’ll assume the party was a hit,” I looked around the penthouse, once immaculate now slightly messy. Wine glasses and paper plates half filled with last night's hors devours filled every surface in the apartment. I was glad to know that even rich people partied hard. 

She nodded and busied herself with picking up last nights mess. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry about the mess. Hans and I are having a bit of a lazy morning.”

I nodded, my attention suddenly seized at the acknowledgement of this mysterious fiance who had been missing until then. As Greta cleaned and I wandered deeper into the apartment, she continued. “Anyway, your stuff was a hit. Can I give out your phone number to a few friends? They want to buy some of your art.”

“Yeah, sure, that would be amazing!” I watched as she pulled down a painting of mine from the dining room wall. 

“My friend Chelsea wanted to buy this one,” She pointed to the statue in the center of the room. “And Bernie wants to buy the wire one.” I nodded, shocked into wordlessness. I could imagine the party, all the guests who I assumed would ignore my life’s work. I couldn’t picture them liking it, much less wanting to buy it.

“And I want to buy that one!” Greta squealed and pointed to the painting in the dining room, the acrylic covered canvas of the man in the window adorning the grey wall. “That was the favorite of the evening! I just couldn’t get over it!” 

“Of course, whatever you want!” I felt a grin sweep over my face. I had heard stories of the nobody making his name known because of a few vocal supporters admired in the art scene.

All I had to do now was work my ass off. 

I collected the few pieces that people hadn’t claimed. Not many, enough for me to carry down the street with only slight discomfort. The rest Greta would hold, handing them out to her friends as they sent me payment, far more money than I ever thought I would make. 

Thanking her profusely, I made my way to the door. “It’s nothing,” She assured me. “It was a pleasure to show your work. The firm loved it.”

“I’m just so glad to work with you in this. This would have gone nowhere if it weren’t for you, Gret-”

“Greta! Do you know where my razor is?” 

A body rounded the corner from the hallway, hurling into the dining room with a type of relaxed recklessness. I thought for a moment I was still asleep. Maybe, I had dreamt waking up and making coffee. I had imagined kissing Max goodbye and knocking on the door for Greta’s apartment. And I had hallucinated Hanschen Rilow rounding the corner, shirtless, with a pair of pajama pants hanging loosely from his hips. 

And he must’ve thought this was a nightmare. When he, the vision that is, saw me his eyes widened in shock. His grip tightened around the can of shaving cream, his face turning as pale as his knuckles.

I pinched my palm. No luck. I wasn’t waking up yet. 

“Yeah, Hans,” Oblivious Greta pointed towards the hallway he came from. “I tucked it underneath the sink in that little caddy.”

But no movement. Not from me, not from Hanschen. We just stayed still, taking in each other’s forms. 

He hadn’t changed much, not physically at least. His messy hair was still parted in the middle, some strands falling into his face. And he still wore a pair of glasses low on his nose. He was still Hanschen. Maybe a bit paler, and a few inches taller. But his defined, bare chest showed that he was still working out, maintaining his appearance. 

“Ernst…” He was the first to speak, his voice so fragile I would have thought it would shatter before reaching my ears. 

My his face, I could tell he had been trying to forget me as I had been attempting to forget him. He tried to forget my face, my eyes, the way my arms fell to my sides, how I shifted my weight from side to side like I was trying to figure out where to land. 

“Hanschen.” I nodded, trying to contain the blush I knew was growing on my cheeks.

He looked at me like I was something familiar, but ancient. Like a face you knew only in dreams. And I didn’t blame him. I had changed a lot since he last stood before me. I had left my hair grow out of the preacher’s son cut I had been wearing since I was in grade school and dark brown now swooped and flicked up around my cheekbones. And I had given up any previous wardrobe for much tighter jeans and a filthy denim jacket covered in patches that Max had sewn on. And the women’s boots I wore probably boosted me an extra inch or two. This Ernst Robel was nothing like the one Hanschen knew in school. 

“You two know each other?” Greta asked after a few more moments of silent stares. Here eyes flicked rapidly and nervously between Hanschen and I.

He still hadn’t taken his eyes off of me. 

“Yeah. We went to school together.”

As shock subsided, my gaze turned into a glare. “That’s one way to put it.”

He nodded, his eyes retreating from my face and looking to Greta, confused by angelic beside the dining table. It’s like we were speaking our own language made up of memories and bitterness. “Ernst, you went to Faraday?” She gasped. “Oh wow, Hans, you should have told me!”

“I would if I knew.” He set down the shaving cream and I saw all the delicate muscles in his arm tense. I wish he had stopped being beautiful.

“So… Law?” I said, my voice pointed. By his expression, I assumed he didn’t imagine that I had grown a backbone in the last five years. But that kinda shit happens when you have to rebuild yourself a million times over after someone tore you apart. 

He nodded, “Yeah. I just graduated in December.” 

“He just started with a new firm,” Greta interjected, her pride shining through her words. 

I shrugged off her comment and stared at Hanschen, my words pointed as I muttered. “Well, I pictured you as more of an English major.”

The words flew past Greta and seemed to hit Hanschen square in the chest. He took a deep breath, thinking over what to say as Greta chimed back in. “He was at first. That’s how we met.”

I sucked my teeth and nodded. If I heard any more I was sure I was going to either vomit or punch him square in the nose. A rage washed over me when I saw Hanschen that was strange, but not new. I was used to feeling this anger when I thought of him. A passing feeling of betrayal from an almost decade old wound that he tore open, marking the immaculate floors and marble countertops with my blood. 

I had erased his face from my mind, from my memories. He went from plaguing my every moment to being a shadow that lived in the recesses of my brain. For a while there, even when I tried to imagine him, I was unable to conjure up his image. I thought I was cured. 

Then, he returned and tore apart any progress the last seven years had made. Now, looking at his face, every detail became familiar again. I felt like I knew him like I did when I was eighteen. I felt like I could reach out and kiss him. I felt like he was mine again. 

“Ernst, why don’t you stay and we can catch up? Hans, go put on a shir-” Greta attempted to begin. 

“No. It’s fine. I have to go!” I insisted and made my way towards the door again, not allowing the memory to pull me back. 

Maybe, as I opened the door, this would all fade. I’d wake up and it would be New Years Eve. And Max would be in my arms and by the time I get up and take a shower and make myself some coffee, I will have completely forgotten about the weird dream I had about Hanschen Rilow from high school.

I had always had such vivid dreams. 

“I’ll be in touch, Ernst!” Greta called after me and I fumbled with the handle. I noticed how sweaty my hands had become, how I was shaking in a way that made the canvases in my arms clatter together. 

“Yeah, cool. Bye.” I muttered and managed to get the door open. This must be how animals feel fleeing from their cages, I thought. 

“Bye, Ernst,” Hanschen’s voice, barely audible, came from behind me just as I closed the door. I wished he hadn’t said my name as I left, because the sound of him saying it would haunt me the rest of the day.

He sounded just like he used to.

  



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing this fic: haha... what a funny scenario. Wouldn't it be wild if this situation ever-  
my ex, moving back to LA: :-) hey  
me, in a dedicated relationship: :-(

“Hi, is this Ernst Robel? I got your number from Greta and…”

“Hello, Ernst? I’m a friend of Greta’s and…”

“Is this Ernst? I saw your art the other night and…”  
All week, the phone was ringing almost constantly. Max stopped even attempting to pick it up, always assuming it was for me. And it almost always was. On the other end were various partygoers, asking about their favorite pieces and naming prices much higher than I would ever dream of. For the first time ever, I had to turn down offers, telling whatever SoHo lawyer on the other side that I was sorry, but I already promised the piece to someone else, someone who was probably working down the hall from him. 

By Friday’s tenth phone call, my voice had become completely monotone. “Hello,” I said into the receiver. “This is Ernst Robel. What can I do for you?”

“Ernst? It’s Mom.” 

Immediately, I melted into her voice. Even over the phone, it was soft and welcoming. Her voice was like sunshine and it lit up the tiny kitchen. With a sigh, I found myself leaning against the door frame and sinking into my feet. “Mom… I missed you.”

“I missed you too, honeybee. How are things? Still busy? Still selling?”  
“Still selling,” I assured her, now cradling the receiver to my face. Maybe if I held it close enough to my face, I would be able to feel her through the telephone wires. “I’ve made almost ten thousand this week, Mom. It feels like a dream.”

“It’s your reality, Ernie!” She practically squealed. “I’m so proud of you too. I called all your aunts and uncles to tell them about your big break out there. Even Oscar, who told me that when you moved to New York to get your ass on the next flight to Sacramento. He said he was surprised, but he was happy for you. The whole family is so excited to see what you do.”

“Glad I didn’t turn out how you all expected me to.”

“How’s that, Ernst?”

“A disappointment.”

There was silence for a moment of two before she sighed on the other side. “Ernie, listen to me. The only person who ever , for a second, thought you were a disappointment was you.” All I could do was smile and exhale the anxious breath I had been holding. “Now,” She said with a smile in her voice. “How’s Max? I haven’t talked to him in a while.”  
Standing upright again, I leaned into the living room, where Max tuned his guitar on the loveseat and pretended like he wasn’t listening into every word I said. It was impossible not to in so small of a space. Or when you’re a s nosy as he his. “Max, how are you? Mom wants to know.”

“Tell Mom I’m wonderful!” He called back. “And I’m proud of you too, dumbass.”

“Did you just let him curse at you?” Through the phone, Mom feigned surprise. 

The conversation turned into a long one, about the house and how the garden was standing up against the snow. How Christmas was without me. How none of the kids in her class wanted winter break to end. Then it devolved, as it always did, into “Kids Say The Weirdest Shit” hosted by Robin Robel. She was telling me about a kid in her class who had an affinity for eating crayons when Max began signalling me to wrap it up. 

“Everyone’s downstairs. There’s coming up right now,” He hissed, “Tell Mom I love her though.”  
I gave him the thumbs up before interjecting into the end of my mom’s story. “Hey, Mom, sorry but I gotta go. We’re having guests over.”

“Oh that’s fine, Honeybee. I got work to do here anyway. The roof is leaking again.”

“In my room?” When she laughed, I took that as an answer. “God, I used to hate sleeping in there during the winter.”

“I know. That’s why I never got around to completely fixing it. I liked you climbing into bed with me when you were little.”

I smiled again, the warm feeling spreading in my chest. “I love you, Mom. Take care. I’ll call you soon.”

“You better. Because I miss you. Good luck, Ernie. I love you.”

As soon as I hung up, our door flew open. Ilse stomped through the door first, followed by Martha and Anna on her tail, both women breathless from the climb up the narrow stairs. 

“Look at Van Gogh over here!” Ilse’s wrapped me up in a bone crushing hug. “A regular DaVinci of our era!” 

There were praises all night as we watched FRIENDS reruns and ate the pizza Max had ordered. They would joke that I could afford to go buy us more beer now that I was the chosen starving artist of the New York Upper Crust. The group had gotten together to celebrate, both my success and the one week mark until they launched their first tour. It was just as the openers for the east coast to midwest leg of a tour of a band I had never heard of, but they were proud as hell. 

“You’re the luckiest bastard I’ve ever met,” Anna joked, pushing away the empty cardboard pizza box after taking the last piece. 

“It’s not luck,” Max was quick to defend. His hand moved to my knee, fingertips with painted black nails squeezing me softly. “It’s talent. This is a long time coming."

I moved to lean in and press a kiss to his cheek, partially to thank him and partially to digust the others, when the buzzer for the front door rang and I froze. “What the hell? Everyone I know is already here,” I looked at the clock, reading nine-fifteen PM. Far too late for any packages. 

Max patted my leg with a silent ‘I got it’ and got up to walk to the door, where the small cal box rang. He pressed the answer button and said into the speaker. “Uhh… Hello?”

“Hello, is Ernst home?”

The voice on the other side was a male’s, but the static made it sound like it could be anyone’s. Max looked at me with raised eyebrows. Whoever it was, he was wondering if I wanted to deal with that right now. But I nodded, sure, might be a very eager client. And Max had unplugged the phone when everyone arrived so maybe he just took things into his own hands. 

“Yeah, he is.”

“Can he come down and speak with me?” Max looked at me again, this time with a smile of disbelief on his face. I moved to shake my head when the voice clicked back, “This is Hanschen.”

Max’s mouth fell open, staring at the speaker silently for a moment before turning to me. “You’re fucking kidding me…” He sighed. “Ernst, how the hell did he-”

“Hello? You still there?”

“One fucking second!” Max exclaimed into the speaker and turned back to me. “Why is Hanschen Rilow on our stoop?”

“Who?” Ilse asked, but Max shrugged her off, choosing instead to stare at me with laser eyes. 

“He’s Greta’s fiancee.” 

“Greta? Like a woman?” Max laughed loudly. “What the hell is this reality I’m living in?”

I stood, making my way to put on my jacket and head to the door when Max stopped his laughter. “You’re gonna go talk to him?”

“What would you prefer I do?”  
He pressed his finger to the talk button, “Tell him to fuck off.”

I swatted his finger away from the button and opened the door. “I’m going to be at least civil, Max.”

As the door shut behind me I heard Max chuckle. “It’s a small fucking world.”

Down on the stoop, Hanschen leaned over to speak into the speaker below the list of last names for all the residents in the building. “Hello? Anyone there?” he said before looking up to see me and pulling his finger away. “Oh. Hi, Ernst.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I said, my voice stern and strong as I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets to protect my hands from the frigid winter air. Hanschen was also bundled up in an expensive looking coat, revealing a bit of his dress shirt and tie at his collar. 

“I work nearby and Greta wanted me to swing by and invite you to come out to dinner with us tomorrow.”

“You must work late,” When he shrugged, I leaned up against the closed door and continued. “So are you her errand boy or her fiance?” 

He scoffed and shook his head. “She just wants to thank you, Ernst. Please stop being stubborn and say you’ll come.”

“I’m not stubborn,” I lied through my teeth. “I just think it’s funny, that’s all.”

“What is?”

“How different you are.”

There was silence between us. Nothing but the sound of the city around us. We were alone, uncensored. But for some reason, neither of us wanted to ask what we were thinking. Hanschen rocked back and forth on his heels before speaking just to stop the silence. “Well, whoever answered that buzz wasn’t too glad to hear from me, huh?” 

I nodded, my face stone cold as I confirmed to him. “Yeah, that’s Max. My boyfriend.”

“Oh!” Hanschen tried his best to hide any surprise, but failed miserably, his eyes cast down to the stone steps beneath us. “That’s uh… Good for you.”

“Well not all of us need to cover that kind of thing up.”

His gaze snapped up suddenly, almost panicked. There it was. The line in the sand that he had drawn. And I dashed through it like an Olympic runner. He sucked his teeth and inhaled sharply, as if silently wishing we could return to fifteen seconds ago. “I’m not covering up anything….” He exhaled a deep, calming breath and finally looked me in the face. “Just come to dinner with us tomorrow, Ernst. Please. Make this easier for me.”

“I don’t care about what’s easier for you,” I found myself smiling at him, sickly and smooth. “I haven’t cared about that for a while. But I’ll come, okay. For Greta.”

“Thank you.”

Hanschen was quiet as I turned, typing in the keycode to enter the building again before he spoke up again, just and I swung open the heavy door. “You know, when I graduated, I was offered a really amazing job in Denver. A lot better than this one.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I scoffed and turned to face him again, taking in his flushed face in the lamplight. 

“I decided to stay in this city.”  
“Why?”

“Because I knew you were here somewhere.”

More silence. This time, I found myself staring at his shoes, the words I wanted to say caught in my chest before I turned to get back into my building. “I wish you found me sooner.”

And then I closed the door behind me, making sure it was shut tight and I didn’t see his face before I left. Because I wouldn’t have wanted to go.


	8. Chapter 8

“This is fucking insane…” Max muttered, rocking back and forth on his heels. He attempted to light the cigarette hanging in his mouth. But the heavy rainfall had made his lighter wet, leaving only the clicking sound where a flame had once been. 

Skillfully, I leaned over and pressed my lighter to the end of his cigarette, watching his eyes move from his shaking hands to my face, still alive with bitterness. “Sorry I had to drag you out here,” I nodded and watched people walk past us under their umbrellas and thick raincoats. A few of them would duck down under the awning where Max and I were hiding from the downpour and go into the restaurant we stood outside. All of there people in slick suits or gorgeous cocktail dresses. 

Max and I watched these people look us over as they entered the restaurant. They probably thought we were out of place, me in my wrinkled button up and too tight, too high slacks, and Max in his burgundy turtleneck and dangling earrings. 

And we were. So much so that we didn’t even try to go inside and give the name for our reservation. We just knew they would assume we were either crazy or high. So we waited the long, painful moments for Greta and Hanschen to arrive and we out way in. 

“It’s fine,” Max exhaled a plume of smoke. “I’m glad I’m here. I want to see how much bullshit comes out of Hanschen’s mouth tonight.”

I rolled my eyes, “I don’t see why you hate the guy so much, Max.”   
“Don't you hate him too?” He scoffed, moving to pass the cigarette to me. But I shook my head. “No need to be so superior about it when you also think he’s a piece of shit.”   
“Yeah cause he fucked me over,” I paid much more care to whisper than Max did. “He didn’t do shit to you.”

Max looked up at me, his pale eyes seemed to glow under the orange light pouring from the wide wide windows. His gaze was soft, loving. “He hurt you, Ernst. That’s enough reason for me to think he’s a piece of shit.”

I moved to lean down and kiss him just as I heard the sounds of high heels approaching, followed by a high pitched. “Ernst!” 

One hell of a way to ruin a moment. 

Greta, wearing a sleek, red dress pulled me into a hug, her small arms wrapping around my torso like a child. Beside here, Hanschen stood, his arms stiff at his sides and his gaze straight ahead. “And this is…”

“I’m Max. Ernst’s partner in crime.”

“Max is my partner,” I corrected, watching as Greta pulled Max into a hug as well. The two being around the same height was a bit funny, but they were at least able to look less awkward than she and I had. 

“This is, Hans, my fianc-”

“I know who you are!” Max practically chirped, holding his hand out for Hanschen to shake. “Such a pleasure to meet you. I've heard so much.”   
And so the bar was set for the evening. Three who know, one who’s ignorant. 

But Greta didn’t seem to notice she was out of the loop. She was too enamored by Max and I. She spent the entire dinner ogling over the two of us like cute kittens stumbling over themselves. I had been upgraded from her cute personal artist to her cute personal homosexual, complete with sidekick. It was hard for me not to tell her that she was already engaged to the “gay best friend” she craved. Surrounded by socializing businessmen and their model wives, she felt the need to stare at our hands, clasped together atop of the white cloth covered table. Even Max, who I’ve seen insist on PDA even after getting death threats shouted at us in the streets, let go of my hand and interlocked his fingers in his lap. 

Over appetizers and entrees, polite conversation came and went. How was the design business? Do you like the food? How long have you been in New York? What’s your band’s name? When are you going on tour? To where? Any gallery openings coming up soon? Hanschen didn’t talk much. But when spoken to, he looked up from his plate and answered obediently. The guys at the firm were fine. He missed Vermont a bit. He got the suit from Saks Fifth Avenue.

THings didn’t get even mildly interesting until dessert came and Greta finally said what she had been dying to say all night. “So,” She pulled her fork for the tiramisu and gestured to Max and I. “How’d you to meet?”

“Well, we met when-”

“We grew up together,” Max squeezed my knee under the table. His eyes flicked from me, to Hanschen, and back to Greta. “I had a huge crush on him when I was in elementary school. And through most of middle school.”

“Oh that’s so cute! I might just die!” Greta squeaked. “You knew even then?”

“You figured out that you were into boys pretty early, didn’t you?”

“Well I guess I did…” Greta shifted a bit, her cheeks turning red at my bluntness   
I felt myself roll my eyes as Max continued. “But we didn’t even get together until my senior year, winter break.” Across the table, I saw Hanschen freeze, his jaw clenched mid-chew and his eyes bearing a hole in his empty wine glass. But Max had already emptied four and was just drunk enough to continue, his gaze now pointed at Hanschen like the barrel of a gun. “New Years eve, he came to a house party. And I fell in love with him all over again from across the room.” His gaze dropped, moving to Greta with a sympathetic shrug. “But his heart belonged to someone else. Some hot-shot Faraday jock. So I let him go and hoped he’d come back.”

Hanschen’s lips pursed and he brought his fist to his mouth, staring at the table in front of it as if it were made up of ancient runes. I found myself watching every move he made, every switch expectantly. I wanted to see him crumble beneath Max’s words. 

“And he did?” Asked Greta, glancing between us expectantly.

With a shrug, Max nodded. “Well imagine my surprise when I get a call a few months later and it’s Ernst Robel asking me to pack up my shit and move out to New York with him.” He laughed, looking at me with eyes brimming with love. “He knew more than anything that I wanted to get out. So the day after I graduated, I got on a plane to New York City. We were just roommates at first but that didn’t last long. We just work so well together.”

Quiet, almost inaudible, he added, “When you really love someone, you’d go anywhere for them I guess.”

I saw Hanschen’s eyes dart suddenly. It was like watching a cat play with a mouse he had caught. Max batted Hanschen to and fro, and Hanschen could do nothing in retaliation but look away and pretend he didn’t see the claws. 

“Well we’re the same way!” She chirped, reaching out to rub Hanschen’s shoulder. “We met in college of course. Both English majors at first. Then I switched to design and he switched to law but we just couldn’t stop thinking of each other, so we made it all official.” I didn’t see how that was like Max and I at all, but I smiled politely and took a sip of my water. She leaned forward, as if afraid to embarrass Hanschen. “You know, I was his first girlfriend ever.”

I coughed suddenly, holding back a laugh and sending ice water down my chin. I continued to cough, snatching up the cloth napkin in my lap to hold to my mouth to, partially to catch the spill but partially to hide the shock.

“Christ, Ernst, are you okay?” Greta gasped. I nodded, feeling Max’s hand on my shoulder and looking up to see Max looking at me, his gaze shifting from worry to amusement. “I know it’s surprising but…” She chuckled uncomfortably.

“Yeah, doesn’t sound quite right,” Max held back a laugh, shaking his head. 

But dessert still came to an end, Hanschen sitting like a statue the entire time. It was as if he imagined that, if he sat still enough, I wouldn’t see him. But I saw him. And I saw the panic in his eyes. There was power in knowing that any moment I could tear apart the lie he had built his life with Greta on.

But I didn’t. I just thanked them for dinner, hugging Greta and shaking Hanschen’s hand again like nothing had ever happened. Greta tried to insist that they pay for a taxi home for Max and I, but I was quick to assure her that our apartment was just a handful of blocks away.

The second they got in their own taxi and waved goodbye from the other side of the window, I turned to Max. “You really like to pull some shit, don’t you, Max?”

He scoffed, faking offense as he tried to follow me, but he couldn’t quite catch up to my long strides. “What shit?”

“Bugging Hanschen all night!” I pulled up the collar of my jacket around my cold neck. 

“He’s an asshole! He deserved it,” When his walk finally caught up to mine, he attempted to take my hand in his. “I was so close to just telling Greta flat out.”

I pulled my hand from his with a scowl. “Don’t even joke about that, Max.”

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“I need to stay on her good side,” I stopped walking to turn to Max and talk to him, face to face. “Her and all of her friends are the only hope I have to make any sort of a name for myself. So I’m not too keen on you telling her that her future husband is a fairy and ruining everything.”

“Ernst you don’t need those fuckers! You’re talented enough you could-”

“Just be civil next time,” I demanded, picking back up the walk towards our building. “Please.”

Max followed a few steps behind me, arms crossed and his gaze locked on the ground in front of us. I knew he meant well, his standards for me were just higher than my own. We almost never fought, but when we did, it was on account of the principles he’d rather die than betray. He called it ‘artist’s dignity’, I called it being stuck up. So we didn’t say much the walk home, or the walk up the stairs. We didn’t say anything until we got into the apartment, turned on the lights, and I saw the red lights blinking on the answering machine. 

“Huh, seven new calls,” Max muttered, taking off his jacket and peering around the corner into the kitchen.

I nodded and watched as he raised his eyebrows and moved to the bathroom. How petty, I thought, and clicked the play button. 

“ You’ve reached Max and Ernst. Leave a message!”

“Hey, Ernst, this is your aunt Lisa…”

Immediately, I recognized fear in her voice. I didn’t know Lisa well. I knew her in Christmas dinners and some faded childhood memories, but I knew fear when I heard it. And I knew sadness and anger as she continued. 

“I just wanted to tell you that you Mom was uhh… found today...Dead.”

I don’t remember doing anything that moment. I remember the rage flooding my blood, making my ears ring and my temples throb with pain. She continued a teary explanation. Something about her heart and the neighbors. That’s all I could recall before I realized I had ripped the cord from the wall and cut off the power to the answering machine. 

But it was too late, I heard it.

That’s when my body gave out.

Crumpling like a shattered stone statue, I sank to the floor, dropping the chord to my side helplessly. I opened my mouth, to wail or scream or curse God. But nothing but guttural choking came out. 

Then Max appeared, wordless. Nothing had to be exchanged between us before he kneeled beside me and wrapped his arms around me, running his hand through my hair and I rocked back and forth,my cries still caught in my throat.

I wasn’t able to think. I was just able to fall into Max’s touch, the only thing keeping me on this earth. 

I swayed to and from, my chest breaking into violent sobs that finally found a footing in croaked out wails and gut wrenching screams. But Max didn’t flinch. He just kneeled beside me and pressed his face to my shoulder, assuring me in words I couldn’t quite here. My desperate hands reached up to grab ahold of his arm and hold it up against me. I needed something tangible. Something to pull me from this nightmare. 

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

It was five am when it finally hit me. Sitting there in our bed, Max fading in and out of consciousness beside me, I realized that she was gone. There would be no more phone calls, no more Christmases, no more hugs, no more lit up smiles. Part of me had thought that she would be there if I called, pick up the phone with a chipper voice and a sigh, calling me honeybee and wishing me good luck. 

That’s when the actual tears came. Not the angry ones, the sad ones. The muffled sobs. Max, who had been close to silent all night, was awoken by my body shaking against his. Still in his version of formal wear, he sat up and pressed his lips to my temple. There was no ushering of “it’s okay” because he knew it wasn’t. Instead he just held me like he had before. If he couldn’t fix my pain, he was bound to push me through it.

I remembered when he first arrived in New York. Our apartment at the time, even smaller than this one in an even worse neighborhood, so cold that it made sense for us to spend our nights pressed up close together on the couch. Even in the brief time when we weren’t together, we could hold each other to keep warm, to feel safe, to feel a semblance of love. Then one night, Max told me he loved me. That he still loved me. He hadn’t stopped since New Years Eve almost a year before hand. 

That’s what he told me that night, over and over. He loves me. He loves me. I was assured that he loves me then, spending the long night listening to rain slam against our window and my body-shaking cries.

By eight, he had plugged the phone back in. He knew I wouldn’t have been able to make it through the night with it in. He played the messages while I packed my suitcase, listening with only half of my mind. 

Most of the calls were from other family members. My aunts and uncles, one of my cousins. All of them wishing me luck, asking what happened, where I was, how I was doing, when they could see me.

They all asked if I needed any help. I would say no, I could handle this. I lied so easily.

The last message was from Greta. Her chirpy, ignorant voice broke from the gloomy, hushed tone of all the others. 

“Heya, Ernst!” Her voice rang. “I just had the best time last night! You and Max are just a delight! My friend Phoebe called and asked if she could buy your-”

Then, I moved. For the first time all day I was fast, pushing past Max’s small frame and pressing my finger to the “call back button”. It rang for a few moments, this pause filled with Max’s worried glances, before clicking to a voicemail. 

“Hi! You’ve reached Greta Brandenburg and Hans Rilow. Please leave a message with your name, who you’re calling for, and a number to reach you at and we’ll get right back to you. Ciao!”

As soon as the beep rang, I began my waterfall of words. “Greta, this is Ernst. Listen, I don’t care whatever you and your friends want, you can have. Just come pick them up from Max. But I’m not selling anything else after this. There was a family emergency and I’m moving back to California and I don’t know when I’ll be back. It was a pleasure doing business with you.”

I shoved the phone into the receiver and looked to Max, his eyes wide. It was the first time I had spoken all day.

“You finish packing,” He said, his voice so soft I would have thought he was a ghost. “I’ll book our flight for tomorrow morning.” 

“Our flight?” I asked, watching him shimmy past me and try to pick up the phone I was blocking.

“Yeah, you’re gonna need some help,” He explained as if it were obvious. “I need to be there for you, Ernie.”

I pulled the phone from his hand, shaking my head, “Max. The tour. You guys leave for Chicago on Friday.”

“I’ll tell them to postpone, this is an emergenc-”

“It’s my emergency, Max. Not yours.”

He nodded a few times, his lips pursing closed before he sighed out. “I wanna be there for you, Ernst. Let me go with you. Please.”

“Family will be there,” I reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder and feeling it shake beneath my palm. He seemed so small, much smaller than normal. “And you’ve been working up to this tour for years. This is your time, Maxie.”

Then, he was hugging me. His body against mine, his head on my chest. Not holding me as he had been earlier, but hugging me, as an equal. Under his breath he muttered. “You’re so strong, Ernst. You know that, right?”

I nodded, pressing my lips to the top of his head, strands of dyed black hair tickling my nose. He tilts his head up to look at me, beautiful pink cheeks shining from the teardrops rolling down them. He sniffs a bit in an attempt to hide it, as he had been doing the entire night before. But there he was, tears pouring down his face and his bright pink lips trembling. “I love you.” I found myself whispering. 

He nodded, pressing his face to my chest and sighing. He seems so small, so weak, as I had been in his arms all night. It took a lot for him to be there for me all night, he felt drained up against me. So I leaned down to whisper to his gentle, resting face. “You should lay down and sleep, Max.”

He nodded and shuffled to the bed before just collapsing down among the unmade blankets. “You should sleep too…” He says, his voice whining and gritty. 

I nod and sit beside him. I gaze at him awhile before running my fingers through the puffy black waves. He feels so small, so beautiful.

He’s all mine, I find myself thinking before I fade away beside him. 

I thank God that I don’t dream of anything. 

Max and I wake up sometime around four in the afternoon and decide to get wasted to evade the ever encroaching want to stay in bed all day and fall into ourselves. 

It was what we did more and more steadily through the years. Didn’t land a gig? Drink. Got fired? Drink. Rough day? Drink. And as a man who spent the last five years of his life bartending to make ends meet, Max could make one hell of a drink. 

By eight or so, the sun was long gone, but we were still on the fire escape, beers in our hands, discussing anything besides my mom, the house, and the flight tomorrow morning. 

“Best Beatles album?” He posed to me,his sloppy smile playing along his pink bow lips.

Thank God we were both happy drunks. 

“Seargent Peppers, easy,” I shrugged. Inside, a Blink-182 album played faintly. Max loved Blink-182 so much, he swore that if I ever left him, he’d marry Mark Hoppus in Canada. 

When he got really drunk, he’d swear that he’d marry me. 

He shook his head, “God, I forget that you have no taste!” When I scoffed at that, he continued. “You’re ignoring the art that is Help!”

“Since when are you the king of taste?” I asked. “You like whiny voices and loud guitars more than you like music.”   
“Because I’m a whiny voice with a loud guitar and I gotta scope out the competition,” He leaned over to plant a sloppy kiss on my lips before leaning away again. He couldn’t lean that far though, our legs were tangled together so that we were somehow in each other’s laps. But he just continued the game. “Best soda?”

“Coke.”

“Gotta agree with you there,” He held out his bottle and we clicked them together in mock celebration. He was looking up at the starless sky, pondering what the next question should be, when we heard the buzzer for the front door. “How rude,” Max scoffed and stood. “Doesn’t he know we’re mourning?”

We weren’t sure how long it had been going off, but both of us tried to get up and struggle back through the window. Max slid in with ease while I attempted to steady myself on the railing of the fire escape. My head still spinning and my stomach turning inside out, Max reached his hand out to me. “Come on, Ernie. I think you’re a lot drunker than I am.”

I nodded and fumbled my way through the window, trying to stabilize myself on the doorframe to the kitchen as I watched Max, seemingly sober, walk towards the front door. 

I closed my eyes and tried to keep my head on my shoulders, listening to Max speak into the speaker. “Hello?”

“Hi, Max, this is Hanschen. Is Ernst home?”

My eyes shot open and immediately, I saw Max’s beautiful, big blue eyes narrow in anger. “Why the fuck do you wanna speak to Ernst?” He growled.

There was silence for a moment or so before Hanschen spoke back up, his voice weaker now than before. “Well uh… Greta said he called today and was pretty worried about hi-”

“You have no place to worry about him,” Max demanded into the speaker. “You should fuck off right now.”

On the other side, I could hear Hanschen take a deep breath before saying, “Listen, Max. I just wanna make sure Ernst is okay. I worry about-”

I couldn’t quite tell what Hanschen was saying because Max had thrown open the door, charging down the hall. I could hear his footsteps creaking down the stairs before I gathered the strength to stand up straight and walk towards the still open door. I held onto the stair railing like it was the key to life as I walked down it, taking each step slowly and surely, like a newborn deer. This must’ve taken some time, because by the time I got down to the front door of the building, Max and Hanschen were already in the middle of a heated discussion. I found myself pressing the side of my face to the front door and listening to their muffled voices. 

“You’re not allowed to come back into his life right now, Hanschen.”   
“But I care about-”

“You hurt him. Don’t you get that? What aren’t you understanding?”

“Max, that was a long time-”

“You’re not allowed to care about him now when you didn’t care about him then.”

“I did care.”

“Bullshit!” Mzx raised his voice, almost to a yell. “That is such bullshit, Hanschen! You know that.”

“It’s not bullshit!”

“You’re gonna hurt him again! And I won’t let you! I love him. You wouldn’t understand that feeling. You don’t understand love. You just wanna hurt him again! You’re evil!”

“Max, please,” He seemed to be trying to calm Max down, who I could tell was beginning to pace back and forth along the stoop. “Calm down-”

“Why do I have to be calm! You’re trying to hurt my fucking soulmate! If you could love, you’d be as angry as I am!”

“I can love!” Hanschen raised his voice a bit to match Max’s. “Don’t say I can’t love. You don’t know me.”

“I know what you did to Ernst! You fucking monster. He loved you.”

Then, quiet. Neither man spoke. I heard the clicking of Max lighting a cigarette and Hanschen shifting his weight uncomfortably. I found myself holding my breath, leaning all my weight on the old door. Max was the one to break this silence. “ I know you’re unhappy with Greta. We all do. We can tell. But you cannot try to come back into Ernst’s life because of that. You just keep on lying, it’s what your best at. And leave us the fuck alone.”

“I….” Hanschen’s voice cracked a bit. If I were anyone else, I would have thought he was close to tears. But I knew Hanschen. I knew that he was just afraid. Honesty scared him. “I just want to make sure that he’s okay.”

I didn’t know my hand was turning the handle to the door until I was already pushing the door open. My gaze was locked on my shoes to keep my vertigo in check, but I could hear both men catch their breath as I took a step out onto the stoop, leaning against the door for help keeping still. 

“Ernst…” Max whispered, stepping up to put a hand on my back and stabilize me. That’s when I looked up and saw Hanschen, staring at me with concerned eyes. 

“Hanschen, my mom died,” I choked out, my brain remembering that fact for the first time in hours. 

That’s when I almost collapsed into Max’s arms, leaning most of my weight on the small man and keeping my eyes on the three pairs of shoes. One Converse, one Vans, and one set of slick black leather loafers. 

“Oh God,” Hanschen gasped, stepping towards me. “Ernst, I’m so sorry-”

“Goodnight, Hanschen.”

“Ernst, I’m-”

“Goodnight.”

Max helped usher me through the door, pulling my much larger body against his and closing the door behind us. But I’m sure not before glaring at Hanschen over his shoulder. 

“Christ, Ernie,” Max muttered and began to pull me up the stairs. “You scared me shitless.”

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

When I was little, I used to think our house was so quiet all the time. I envied my classmates who had siblings, watching them bicker and wrestle and play at the top of their lungs. I’d rather come home to that, I thought, than the house that felt ancient and hulking around me. My mousy mother at one end, tending to the garden and reading the paper, and my grandfather at the other, watching the television he had since the seventies and fading away.

After he passed, it was even more quiet. Mom and I enjoyed our quiet nights every night, the lights never being on in more than two rooms. And nothing ever changed either. All the pictures stayed in all the same places, all of the plates were put back in the same cupboards. I used to entertain the idea that we were ghosts in an old abandoned house, never making a sound, just keeping things dusted and nice. 

But I realized I didn’t know silence until the first night alone in that house. 

After my aunts and uncles cleared out for the night, leaving me with hugs and a fridge full of homemade food and endless words of support, the house was silent. Like really silent. I sat on the couch for what felt like hours, trying to hear anything. A creak, a footstep, a burst of wind against a window. But there was nothing. 

No scribbling of Mom’s pen, no dishes being scrubbed, no muffled radio playing at her desk. Just actual silence.

When my grandfather passed, I struggled to walk past the door leaning from the living room to his bedroom, where he had passed. I would rush past it on my way in and out of the house. I avoided sitting in the living room like the plague.

Now, midnight was fast approaching and I couldn’t bear to leave the living room. I imagined waking up the stairs, down the hall to my small childhood bedroom. But I couldn’t picture myself walking past the first door in the hallway. Mom’s room.

In my mind’s eye, my feet froze in front of the old wooden door that creaks every time you touched it. There’s a huge invisible wall that was created by her death that I just couldn't bear to cross.

And even if I did get past it, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. The jetlag had made my body completely exhausted, but my mind moved at high speeds. Every inch of that house electrified my brain into a thousand memories like splinters from a broken baseball bat. 

I couldn’t look at the front steps without seeing Max shuffle around awkwardly, his hands in his pockets as he asked me if that had been my first kiss. I couldn’t see the loveseat in the living room without seeing Mom enjoying her Sunday morning coffee, her eyes following me around the room. I couldn’t see the coffee table without remembering being ten years old and spending hours bent over piles of homework from all of my ‘gifted’ classes. I couldn’t see the stairs without seeing myself, thirteen years old, bounding up the steps and screaming for Mom at the top of my lungs. In my hands, the acceptance letter from that fancy, east coast boarding school that my middle school principal suggested that maybe, just maybe, we could try our luck applying to. 

This house was made of old wood and memories that creaked and groaned in the shadowed silence.

I managed to fall asleep in one of the three guest rooms, my grandfather's old room, after a few shots of whiskey. It was good to know that I had at least gotten past that old fear, but it had just been replaced with another. 

I woke up to the doorbell ringing and my mother’s six siblings all flooding into the entrance hall. Already all in black, they talked and made coffee while I changed into the black suit my aunt Lisa had laid out for me. My mom always kept her updated on my measurements when I was a kid because she loved sending me clothes for presents. I guess that continued well into my adult years. 

Of the six, Lisa was the oldest. But she still wasn’t that old. She had just turned sixty and her oldest was still only a year younger than me. It was the same with the rest of my Aunts and Uncles. All between the ages of forty-five and sixty, none of them could believe that they had all made it, that their baby sister Robin was the first to go. My uncle Ed, the family outcast who ran away the moment he turned 18 and the second youngest of the seven, was already crying. As tears fell down over his cup of coffee, beside him, their second oldest sibling Mark, insisted that it was murder. That the autopsy was wrong, Robin was so healthy and happy and young. This made Ed cry even more and Charlie, the perfect middle of the seven, insist that the autopsy showed that she was born with artery abnormalities and we should be glad she was with us as long as she was.

I could hear every word they said through the thin walls as I got ready. They must’ve forgotten growing up in that house, where I knew that you could hear every step anyone made on those creaky floorboards. 

Their home must’ve always been loud, been exciting. There must’ve always been babies crying and loud laughter and feet running up and down the stairs.

But there they were, silent, subdued, sipping their coffee and watching each other.

I couldn’t recall the last they were all together and neither could they. 

When I came out of the room, my suit jacket in my arms and my tie still untied, they all turned to me. They all looked like my Mom almost exactly. Some just a bit taller, a bit more grey hairs, a bit chubbier. But they all started with the same big green eyes. I had always wished I had those green, Robel eyes, flecked with sparks of gold like fireflies. But I felt like I had been cursed with these doe-like brown eyes. The ones that my father must’ve had. 

“You look so handsome,” Lisa stood and approached me. Her soft hands moved to fix my collar, to flatten the wrinkles of my button up. 

Behind her, my small aunt April spoke, looking at me through her bulking glasses frames. “He looks just like Dad.”

“Just like him,” Her twin, my uncle Ray, muttered. “But he’s got Mom’s freckles.”

There was murmuring of consensus around the table as aunt Lisa tied the dark green she had picked out. “There…” She smiled at me a small, sad smile. “You look wonderful, Ernie.” 

The ride to the church wasn’t awkward, but it was quiet. The small talk that was made was familiar, not forced or uncomfortable. I watched Charlie, April, and Mark banter a bit on how the town had gone to shit, or maybe it was shit when they were growing up and they just didn’t notice. April suggested that it was beautiful, followed by Mark listing off all the drug arrests that had happened in the last month. 

“Okay,” Charlie flicked his eyes between the road and his older brother in the front seat. “Nobody’s hometown is perfect, asshole.”

You would have never thought that they had been separated to every corner of the united states. Texas, Oregon, Ohio, Illinois, Florida. I think Ray spent most of his time in Berlin. My Mom had been the only one to even dream of staying home.

The only one who was silent was Ed, leaning against the backseat window with his eyes shut as if trying to imagine he was anywhere else. And he stayed that way throughout the funeral, standing beside me with tears rolling down his cheeks freely. He didn’t cry loudly. If I didn’t look at him, I would have thought he was as stone faced as I was.

Part of me wished I could have cried. Been the sullen, heartbroken son in the front row. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even force it. I felt numb throughout the entire service. My gaze couldn’t focus, my ears were ringing, all voices sounded muffled. I knew it was my pastor who was speaking, but the meanings of his words faded through me.

He talked about how my Mom was a little girl when he started working there. How she would always have band-aids on her knees and sat in the front row, in the pews that I was sitting in now. How she was a blessed child, who brought into the world another blessed child, and raised the whole town’s blessed children.

Those blessed children, students in her third grade class, lined the back few rows, their heads bowed and their arms wrapped around their parents. For many of them, this was their first time coming face to face with death. 

But there were many others too, so many that they had to stand in the back of the small church. Being in such a small town, everyone knew Mom. She either came into their grocery store, or taught their kids, or made small talk when they walked past her gardening in the front yard.

And the whole town seemed to have something to say too.

First, it was the pastor, then April, then Lisa, then Charlie, and then Mark. After that, it became some people I knew and some I didn’t. One was a coworker she ate lunch with every day, another a childhood friend, another a friend of my grandfather. They all talked about how much they loved her, how the death was a shock, how heaven had one extra angel.

A few mentioned me, her darling little boy, her whole life. I could feel the eyes turning to look at me every time someone mentioned her little boy, all grown up now. They didn’t mention that I looked malnourished, exhausted,in desperate need of a haircut, and was wearing mismatched socks to my own mother’s funeral. 

And I wouldn’t even speak either.

Her only child and I didn’t speak at her funeral.

It seemed like everyone else in Randolph did. But I couldn’t. I sat, frozen, my mouth shut tight. When others looked at me to speak, I looked anywhere else. I looked at the hulking domelike ceiling, the beautiful and ornate windows, the giant statue of Jesus on the cross haunting above the platform where Mom’s shiny, dark red wood casket sat. Closed, of course. 

And it remained closed as it was walked to the cemetary across the street, on the shoulders of her brothers, her nephews, and some of her sister’s husbands. But not her son. Lisa thought that maybe it would be better if I walked behind. 

She knew that I was weak. 

She was lowered into the family plot, a large grey, flat stone with the word ROBEL on the sides. Five bodies were already there, that of her parents, and her grandparents, and her aunt who never survived past childhood. But her stone was the newest, nestled on the very end beside her fathers, it read ROBIN ABIGAIL ROBEL in bold granite letters. Then, in smaller delicate script ‘1959-2002’ and below that, ‘ Loving and generous daughter, sister, mother, teacher, and friend.’ 

I was glad that I decided on the engraving, with influence of April, who suggested we add a line of poetry at the end, a few lines at the bottom reading “I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry.”

But we still cried. 

At least for a while we did, a whole town standing in silence around a hole in the ground. There were easily eighty people in the cemetery to begin with, almost a quarter of Randolph grieving together. People I both knew and didn’t know came up to me, shaking my hands, saying that they were sorry for my loss, that I was in their prayers. I could tell that some of them wanted to ask where I had been, what had happened. But no one did. It wasn’t polite to ask that sorta thing to someone in mourning, I guess. 

But as the minutes crept on, the cemetery emptied. Families all in black huddled out, waving goodbyes and whispering that there were now no Robels left in Randolph. 

Eventually, family started to leave as well. First Charlie, who had two fussy tween daughters who wanted to go back to the hotel. Then Ray, whose wife kissed my cheek goodbye. I almost called her Jackie before realizing that was the first wife’s name. Mark and his son left with him, telling me that he’ll call as he went. Then April with her husband and their gaggle of kids that he needed help wrangling. Lisa was the last to go, telling me that she’d come by before her flight tomorrow, and kissing my cheek goodbye. 

I didn’t even realize Ed and I were the only one’s left until he spoke. His voice was raspy, but solid. “Wanna go grab some coffee, Ernst?”

This was the first time I had heard him talk all day, all my life almost. But he seemed sure of himself, looking at me through thick rimmed, square glasses. He wore a baggy jacket over his suit to shield himself from the unforgiving fog of Northern California winter. “Yeah,” I said, looking around to make sure there was no one else around but us and the workers burying the casket. “Sure, that sounds good.”

There was a small coffee shop in town, walking distance from the church, down the narrow streets on the broken sidewalk. It was a small, squat brick building. Maybe it was something back in the Gold Rush, when Randolph was a booming city filled with life and riches. But now the river ran only with tadpoles and most of the buildings were abandoned. It wasn’t crowded, nothing ever was. So there was almost no wait on Ed’s hot chocolate and my coffee with cream.

“You know, this place was a shoe store when I was a kid,” He said from across the small, circular table. When I looked at him with eyebrows raised, he continued. “I remember I got a kickin’ pair of Nike’s here. First thing I bought with my first paycheck. Probably back in seventy-four, maybe seventy-five.” 

“Why’d it close?” I asked, shucking off my suit jacket as he shook his head, as if shaking off a memory.

“Nothing here stays around for very long. More people are leaving than coming. Pretty soon this whole place is gonna be gone. Now you gotta drive all the way to Sac for a decent pair of shoes.”

“Or Lodi,” I corrected. 

He nodded, “Or Lodi…” He mused and pushed back his hair. A mass of dirty blond waves like Mom’s. Only his weren’t greying, not yet at least. “Yeah. Now with Robin gone I don’t think there’s any families left that go back to the founding of the town,” He chuckled. “But I don’t blame ‘em. We were dumb for sticking around as long as we did. Can’t blame you for leaving. I did the same exact thing.”

“Why’d you leave?” I found myself asking before I could think to be more delicate with things. I had only then realize that I didn’t know anything about Ed. No one did. When I heard the small talk last night and this morning between the siblings, they all asked about each other with familiarity. How are the kids? The house? Do you like where you live? How’s the job going for you? But no one asked Ed these things. He seemed to be newly appareated, like he only recently reappeared in their consciousness.

He shrugged into his mug. “Lots of reasons,” He huffed before looking up at me. “Probably the same as you. This town is so small it’s suffocating. I left right when things started going downhill in Mom’s health. Felt bad about that but… Not all that bad.” He gestured to me with his coco, eyebrows raised. “This is actually the first time I’ve been back since seventy-seven. Plus, your mom was the only one I kept in touch with so… That makes things pretty awkward now, huh.”

I nodded, trying my best to remember in my childhood mind if he was there at Grandpa’s funeral. He wasn’t. And no one seemed to miss him either. 

Ed continued, his gaze seeming to get lost in his memories. “Then, your mom started bringing your Dad around and that was the last straw for me really.”

“He was that bad?” I found myself leaning forward, wildly attempting to grab any scraps of the memories of my father. Ed nodded with a laugh.    
“Oh yeah, huge jackass,” He laughed. “Just loved to fuck with people. He was a tough love kinda guy, but he was even tougher if he hated you. Also a huge pussy,” He rolled his eyes, “I could stand him for a bit cause your Mom liked him so much. Then he started referring to me as ‘Robin’s fag brother’ and I had enough of that house.”

Then, sudden stillness. In me at least.I found myself frozen still, staring at Ed with wide eyes. It was like I was trying to believe that he had misspoken, or I had misheard. But seemed sure of himself, sipping his coco and looking at me like I was a freak before stopping suddenly, his gaze dropping into an amused smile. “Oh, right. She never told you, huh?”

I nodded in sudden, rapid movements. “Yeah. She never told me.”   
With a sigh, Ed leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Well, it’s true. I am. But she didn’t want to tell you. She didn’t want to out me like she did before.”

“Before?”

“Yeah, well,” He clicked his tongue, as if trying to remember something he made himself forget. “We shared a room growing up, Robin and I. We told each other everything. We were barely ten months apart anyway. She was always my best friend,” He raised his eye, looking disappointed from the storefront window into the foggy, dull street. “Well when I was sixteen I told her I liked boys. I had no clue what that meant even. I just thought maybe talking to her about it would help.” He chuckled before sighing wistfully. “Well then she told Mark. And he was already gone out of the house, but he’s got a big fucking mouth. So pretty soon the whole family knew. And Ray can’t keep things to himself either. So I was the town fairy in no time,” A final sip. “That’s one way to make someone the black sheep of the family.”

“God,” I scoffed, leaning my chair back onto it’s back legs. “ I wish she would have told me. “

“She felt so bad about it, she didn’t want to out me again. Even after you came out, she wanted to give me the space to tell you myself. The only reason she told me about you was because she was so proud.”

I laughed, just a bit, keeping my gaze on my hands. “I didn’t really come out, ya know,” I looked up at his confused expression. “Well, I told her that Max was moving in with me, as roommates. But one day she decided to fly out for a surprise visit and when she noticed there was only one bed...We had to explain some stuff.”

“We rarely get to come out on our own terms,” He said, staring into his empty mug. 

I grunted in agreement, “We rarely get to live the life everyone else gets.” 

He nodded, letting the silence sit between us. A comfortable silence as we enjoyed the warm room, our empty mugs, the content clinking of the coffee machines. That was before I spoke up, asking Ed in a quiet voice. “Hey, Ed, you wanna sleep at the house tonight?” 

He looked around the coffee shop before nodding, a soft but real smile on his face. “Yeah. I’d love that Ernst.”

  
  



	11. Chapter 11

Ed didn’t stay too long the next day, he had a three o’clock flight in Sacramento, which meant leaving Randolph by noon. We stayed up late the night of the funeral, talking over a bottle of wine about the past twenty years of my life he had missed. It felt like I was talking to an old friend, even though I had maybe seen him once or twice before. We discuss everything, how he met his partner Matt and moved to Chicago, how I dropped out of school, how homophobic Randolph was, how shitty New York is. It was like we had somehow lived the same life, thirty years apart. And over a bottle of wine, we laughed about how ridiculous the world around us was.

But he was gone by non the next day, hugging me goodbye and telling me that if I needed anything at all, he was a phone call away. 

“Robin was my best friend. I’d do anything for her and I’d do anything for you.”

I still couldn’t cry though. 

And then, the house was empty again. Silence rang through the hallways, the made up beds and the bruised doorways. Death had infested the house I grew up in, seeping into the carpet and staining the wallpaper. 

I tried to do anything to keep my mind off of the death that filled the rooms. I wandered the garden, I tidied the library to the best of my ability without moving too much, I walked into town just to see other people, no matter how few. 

I didn’t even realize the answering machine was blinking with new messages until the sun had gone down. 

“Hey, Ernie,” Max’s voice came through the speakers, crackling and quiet. “I hope you’re doing alright. I missed you a lot today. I’ve been thinking about you all day. I slept alone last night and...Yeah, I just miss you a lot. I wish I was there with you. I want to be there for yo-”

The machine beeped.

“Hey, Ernst, it’s Max,” A new message began, “I’ve just been thinking about you a lot… I hope you got my other message. I just… Can’t stop thinking of you. And I just want you to know I love you and I can’t wait to see you again and-”

There were three more messages, as told by the blinking red number on the screen. But I couldn’t. I just let them play, hearing Max’s voice only in my subconscious as I put on my jacket and made my way out of the front door, his voice almost taunting me as I left.

“I love you, Ernst… I’m here for you, Ernst… I wanna be with you, Ernst…”

Thank God Ollie’s was in walking distance.

The bar wasn’t full, nothing ever was. I had never been in the building before, a domineering brick building on the corner of main street, the door open, the sound of bodies and conversation pouring out into the sidewalk. Entering, I saw the bartender making small talk with the four or five men sitting, separate from each other at the dar. A few others were scattered around the dimly lit room, sitting and having quiet conversation in their booths. 

A room full of a dozen, depressed, middle-aged white guys. And I felt like one of them.

My beer was brought to my booth by the bartender, a mousy, small woman who was getting attacked by constant drunken compliments by the patrons. She smiled at me, a soft but pitying smile. She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but her knowing gaze told me that she had a slight idea. 

I’m not sure how long the night had gone on. No one talked to me, or even attempted to make small talk as I drank my second, third, fourth beer. By my fifth, the bartender’s eyes had gone from tender to just sad, avoiding eye contact with me and instead staring at the floor. She was probably expecting me to get like the others at that point, start getting talkative and friendly in all the wrong ways. But I just thanked her, taking the bottle and focusing on my spinning mind and quieting the sadness that came as soon as Ed had left.

I was beginning to forget that death had invaded my childhood room when I caught the conversation happening at the bar a few feet from me. It was muffled and made up of only mumbles, but I could catch a few words. 

“Yeah, I knew her… Went to high school with her.”

Then more mutterings. 

“They buried her in the cemetery by St. Johns.”

Then nothing i could make out clearly. I don’t know if it was my ears or their mouths that were faulty.

“It’s sad. Her boy up and left to.”

“Who?”

“The boy she had when she was young. With some guy from our school.”

“Where’d he wind up.”

“I dunno, he just up and left.”

I’m not sure how much I paid the bartender, but it must’ve been enough because she didn’t stop me as I stumbled out of the building, past the two men as they discussed blankly “How some people can just abandon the people who love them.''

I had gotten through the front door before the tears came. Part of me thanked God that I wasn’t completely numb.

Part of me cursed the tears pouring from my eyes, squeezed tightly shut, and leaned against the brick wall to stop myself from falling flat on my face and looking even more pathetic.

I pressed my hands to my face in some blind, drunken attempt to possibly halt the sobs. But I could already feel my face flushing red and the snot building up in my nose. Sniffling and choking on sobs, I managed to push myself up off the wall and make it three steps further down the street before stopping again, my cheeks tingling with tears. 

That’s when I saw it. Five or so feet from me, or maybe ten feet because of the depth perception issues I was facing, was an old phone booth. It was beaten and depressing, the glass from the door completely gone and graffitti covering about every square inch of it. But when I managed to get inside of it, the receiver still droned a muffled dial tone. 

I had a few quarters in the pocket of my jacket. And after three attempts that ended with my fingers fumbling and the coins falling onto the concrete, I dialed the number.

Max. I need to speak to Max. I remembered his words, his messages. He loved me, I assured myself. And I love him. And I just needed to hear his voice, to listen to him breathe on the other side and know he’s alive.

“Hello, this is Hans Rilow.”

I took a stuttering breath, my words coming out broken and jagged. “H-Hey, H-Hansch-chen. Th-Th-This is Ernst-t.”

“Ernst, Jesus Christ,” His voice was muffled and full of static, but I could hear the worry in his words. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I-I’m home, in Rand-d-dolph…” I took a deep breath and a loud wailing sob came out, words trailing behind it weakly. “I miss-ss her s-so much-ch, Hansi!”

On the other side his voice lowered, almost as if afraid of being overheard. “Ernst. Are you safe? Have you been drinking?”

“Ye-Yeah…” My voice cracked and squeaked like it was falling apart. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ernst. You’re gonna give me a heart attack,” He took a few breaths and responded in a slow voice. “Ernie… I need you to clean up and go to bed, okay? You’re just tired and-”

“I fucking left her, Hans!” I found myself almost screaming, my vision almost completely obscured by tears. “I left her all alone and she died! I fucking hate myself! I was the worst son. I was her only child. I should have been there for her, Hans! And I wasn’t. I’m fucking selfish! And she died all alone and I wasn’t there and I fucking hate myself.”

The line went silent. Silent, but not dead. The only sound was the sound of my cries, shaking my body and coming out with pitiful whines. Then, after what felt like an eternity, he spoke, a quiver in his voice that I would have called tears if it weren’t Hanschen. Or maybe if it were Hanschen, they would be tears. But this was Hans. Lawyer, New York, engaged Hans. And Hans wouldn’t cry. 

“Ernst. I want you to know this wasn’t your fault, alright? You aren’t God. There are somethings you just can’t control. And you blaming yourself doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help you or her.”

Another pause, this time filled with my deep breaths as I held the receiver close to my ear and felt my heart pound through it. “I want you here, Hans. I need you.”

“I know, Ernie,” His voice suddenly went soft, so smooth and quiet. It was familiar in a way I couldn’t quite name. He let out a long sigh and I realized my sobbing had subsided to a more quiet, constant stream of tears. “Listen, just get into bed, please. For my sake. Crawl into bed and go to sleep. I swear life will look a lot better in the morning.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I didn’t say anything else, just hung the phone up and stood there, leaning against the glass wall of the phone booth. Already, the words I had said were phasing through and out of my brain, completely disappearing from my conscious. But my tears were constant as I stumbled home, my hands stuffed in my pockets and listening to some voice in my head that I couldn’t quite peg telling me to go to sleep. 


	12. Chapter 12

I woke up to knocking much later than I would have liked to. I didn’t quite have a plan for my day besides sitting around the house and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing, like every other day so far. I grimaced when I saw the grandfather clock on the wall proclaimed that it was half past noon, and then grimaced again when I sat up and felt soreness echoing in my neck and back. As I cursed Last Night Ernst, I remembered the knocking. Half asleep and hung over, the knocking sounded like gunshots going off from the front door. 

Must be another well wisher, I thought, who assumed, like any sane person did, that noon was a fine time to go tell someone’s son they were sorry. 

So I peeled myself from my spot on the couch, where I had spent the night with my legs thrown over the arm. I thanked God all the curtains were drawn, but the room was still lit up in amber light from sunlight attempting to peak out from behind brown curtain and bounce off of the pale yellow walls. 

That was what the house looked like in the late Sunday mornings, when I crawled down the stairs after a long night of staying up watching SNL. Mornings like this would smell like coffee and dust. But now they smelt like stale alcohol on my breath and sadness.

I was ready to open the door to a familiar face, a childhood friend, or a neighbor. I was prepared to put on a sad face and say ‘yes, it’s been hard’ and ‘no, I don’t think I’ll be staying’.

But I couldn’t see any face when I opened the door. Blinded by a sudden rush of sunlight, I grimaced, holding my hand out to block out the sun as I hissed out a cracky “Hello?”

“Morning, Ernst.”

I had expected an old familiar face. But not a face that old, and that familiar. Just hearing his voice, gentle and low, I nearly had a heart attack. Then, as my eyes adjusted and I could take in his face, my instincts kicked in. It was light a bright red neon sign screamed in my brain for me to slam the door in Hanschen Rilow’s face. 

“Wait, wait, wait!” He called after me, sticking his foot in the doorframe. I could see him, just barely, through the three or four inch crack.Hanschen attempted to look at me, practically jamming his face in the space between the door and the frame. “Ernst, I spent all morning asking around for your address, don’t shut this door.”

My grip on the handle loosened and I stopped trying to crush Hanschen’s boot. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

“You called me last night, Ernst,” He took this opportunity to further shove himself into the room. “You sounded close to death.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit, stepping back into the living room. “Yeah. I probably was.”

“I could tell…” Hanschen looked around the room, his hands in the pockets of his sporty, sleek winter coat. He smiled and looked back to me as if about to comment, but his face suddenly fell. “Did you just wake up?”

I crossed my arms, scowling at the judgment in his voice. “I’m in fucking mourning, Hanschen. In case you forgot my mother died not even a week ago.”

“I know, that’s why you called me last night.”

“Call you? I didn’t call you.” I attempted to move towards the still open door and insist he leave when he kicked the ancient door closed with his heel. 

“Yes, you did!” He insisted, taking a step closer and moving me another step back. “Listen, I didn’t drop everything in New York to fly out here last minute and get-”

“I didn’t ask you to come here! No one fucking asked you to come here! Why are you here?”

As I approached hysterics, Hanschen reached out and, in one sudden motion, planted his hand on my shoulder. His touch wasn’t like how I remembered it. This wasn’t the soft embraces I had tried to forget or the little glimpses of contact in the hallways, this was a grip. Like he was hanging on, trying to shake life into a dead man. “Yes, you did. I swear to God, you’re so fucking stubborn for no reason, Ernst. I’m trying to help-”

“I don’t want your help-”

“Yes, you do!” His voice boomed and I suddenly realized we had started yelling. In the shock of the moment, we both went silent. I shook off his hand, which fell aside after a small squeeze of hesitation. His gaze also fell aside, looking to the floor, or the walls, or anything that wasn’t me 

My voice broke through the silence, shaking and rough. “How could you help me, Hanschen?”

He breathed a bit, trying to find words, or find a reason. But then, staring at my shoes, he responded. “I think I want to help you find your dad, Ernst.”

“Get the fuck out! Get out of my fucking house! Go home! Get out of my house!” Immediately, I flung back into fury. I didn’t even realize Hanschen was speaking as I placed my hand on his chest, shoving him frantically towards the door, my screams eclipsing his words. 

Hanschen, panickedly grabbing onto the door frame, held his ground. “Listen, Ernst! Ernst, please, listen!” He pleaded over my shouts. When my voice gave way and my shoving seemed to be of no use, he continued breathlessly. “I remember, okay. You didn’t need to find your dad because you had your mom, and you were happy with that. But now that she’s gone-”

“You remember?” I found myself scoffing, running my hair through the tangled mass on my head. “Do you also remember leaving me?”

“You left.”

“You could have followed.”

More silence. A pause filled with clenched fists and heavy breaths. His grip on the door frame loosened as he spoke. “Listen, Ernst. I know you. I think this will bring you closure.”

Through clenched teeth, I replied. “Since when do you fucking know me?” Haschen breathed as if to reply, but I beat him to the punch. “Hanschen, you knew me almost a whole decade ago. You’re acting like I haven’t changed.”

“You’re definitely more stubborn,” He chuckled, looking me over like I was a painting on a wall. “But I still care about you, alright?”

“This me or old me?”

“Both.”

I nodded, keeping my eyes down as I rubbed my palms on the front of my dirty jeans. “Yeah...Fine.” I said after a long sigh. “Whatever you think will help.”

Hanschen laughed, his body suddenly relaxing. I had only then realized that he had been tense since he got to my front door. “Thank you, Ernst. This uh… It means a lot.”

I just kept nodding finally looking up to see Hanschen smiling at me, blue eyes looking shiny and bright. This is the first time I had seen him happy since the nineties. 

I couldn’t help but smile back. But I was quick to hide it, clearing my throat before stating. “You should probably get a room at the Day's Inn in town. It’s just right off of Main Street.”

“Oh, where are you and Max staying?” He leaned on the door frame and, I swear, for a moment, we were in Faraday again. And he was in his pressed, navy blue uniform, leaning against the doorway of my dorm room, asking me if I did the homework. And he would smile at me, just like that, with bright eyes and lifted chest, when he asked me to skip dinner to be with him, to walk the cold campus and look for a spare moment to hold each other. 

“Max isn’t here,” I cleared my throat and Hansi disappeared, replaced by Hanschen. Taller, more bitter, more wide, more tired. “He’s still in New York.”

Hanschen nodded, sucking his teeth before exhaling slowly. “Right… I should probably head to that Day’s Inn then, huh?”


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning, I had forgotten Hanschen was in the house until I heard the gurgling of liquid being poured down the kitchen sink. Most of my morning had already passed by, waking up in the creaky, ancient twin bed that I had slept in all of my childhood. For a moment, when I first woke up and saw the print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night hanging from the slanted ceiling above me, I thought perhaps that I was eleven again. And maybe I’d be awoken by the smell of pancakes and slow, old country music playing from the record player, and Mom humming along to Johnny Cash as she waltzed solo around the living room to the morning news. 

But as I sat up and felt my long adult limbs ache and saw my suitcase in the corner of my room, I remembered. I remembered the funeral, the only smiling day I had in weeks with Ed, the wandering around Randolph, lost in the place that raised me.

I even remembered Hanschen showing up at my door, his nose shiny red and his eyes desperate, frightened, soft.

But I had neglected to remember that he would be coming back in the morning.

I went about showering and getting dressed completely ignorant. It wasn’t until I was walking downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee that I heard someone else in the house. At the bottom of the stairs, I paused to hear footsteps coming from the kitchen, followed immediately by a bottle being unscrewed and the loud sloshing of liquid rushing down the drain.

First, I considered a break in. It seemed unlikely for someone to break into the ancient, lonely house at the end of a long, dirt road at ten-thirty in the morning but, I thought that stranger things were possible as my New Yoker kicked in as I grabbed the brass poker beside the fireplace and crept toward the doorway to the kitchen. Another pop of a cork and more pouring. This allowed me to catch my breath as I pushed the door open and rounded through the doorway, poker ready to swing and my eyes looking desperately for my target.

“Oh, morning, Ernst,” Hanschen said as he set down the now empty bottle of wine on the counter. He then picked up the half empty bottle of gin and began to unscrew the lid, preparing for it’s contents to join those of the three other alcohol bottles sitting on the counter beside him. 

My arm fell to my side, the tip of the poker hitting the tile as I sighed, “What the fuck are you doing?”

A few strands of hair fell into his face when he looked up to see me, his pale eyes alive and calm. “Nothing much!” He pushed up one of the sleeves of the thick, gray flannel he was wearing. “Want some breakfast?”

“That’s my shit!” I lunged forward, seizing the bottle of vodka he had picked up and attempted to take the cap off of. He let go of it without a struggle, watching me pull the dark blue bottle to my chest. “You broke into my house and you’re pouring shit I bought down the drain!”

“The door was unlocked,” Was his only response as he went to grab a half empty wine bottle. I moved to take that from his hands as well, almost knocking over the empty pizza box from our awkward small talk dinner last night. 

Hanschen pulled the bottle up, away from my grasp, popping the cork out with ease and beginning to pour it as I demanded, now looming over him and reaching desperately. “Give me that fucking bottle! You don’t live here, you asshole!”

“How many nights the past week have you been drun- Get off!” He shoved me away with his elbow, some of the bottle’s dark red contents splashing on the tile counters. His voice was becoming gruff. His words rushed. “How many nights have you gotten drunk?”

“I’m a fucking adult!”

The poker was dropped to the ground with a clang as I went to work rescuing the last few bottles of liquor left from Hanschen’s massacre. Right behind me, I felt him follow close behind, his arm swinging around to try to grab at my armful of bottles. “Ernst, how many nights?”

“I’m in mourning!”

“How long are you gonna be in mourning?”

“She died a week ago!”

Hanschen managed to tear a bottle of whiskey from my arms and slam it on the countertop. I stopped trying to struggle back to the liquor cabinet when I saw his face flush pale with anger. Or maybe it was fear. He had become harder to read. “And you’ve been drunk for most of the week.”

I frowned, knowing he was right, but keeping the bottles to my chest. “I am mourning, you asshole.”

“Find a better excuse.” He took the bottle of white wine from my hands and began to pour it, watching the liquid pour down the drain with a stern face. He continued, his gaze holding strong. “Ernst, I’m not going to help you find your dad if you keep on drinking.”

“I never asked you to show up, I never asked you to find my dad. You don’t have the fucking right to come into my house and tell me how to cope with my shit-”

“Stop acting like a fucking child!” His voice boomed. I couldn’t recall another moment where he had raised his voice at me. But there he was, close to yelling as he stared into the drain. “You know this is better for you and you’re just being defiant because you’re still mad at me. If I was anyone else, you’d realize I just want to help you!”

Then, there was silence. I heard Hanschen’s breathing come down. I heard the wind pushing on the windows. I heard the pipes creak as they swallowed my alcohol. I heard the truth settle into our bones before Hanschen cleared his throat, his hands clutching onto the counter on either side of the sink so hard his knuckles turned white. “You have a message on the machine.” His voice was tiny, cracking beneath the weight of what he had said. 

I nodded, setting the final bottle I had attempted to save on the counter next to him and moved wordlessly to the phone. From the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head and continue his work, now in small, slight motions. 

I clicked to hear the message and a familiar voice crackled over the tape. 

“Hey, Ernie,” Max sighed. “Just wanted to check in on you. See how you’re feeling. I’m kinda getting worried because I haven’t heard back from you. We’re gonna leave for Boston tonight to start the tour so…. I’ll call you from there too I guess. I just want you to know I’m here for you. And I love you. And If you need anything at all, please just call me. I’m sorry all of this had to happen right now but I’m gonna be there soon. If you, uh, if you still want me, you know. Have a good day, Ernst. I love you.”

I couldn’t help but sit there for a few seconds, in the chair beside the phone, breathing and staring at the receiver. Too afraid to pick up, too scared to turn around and leave it. I just stared at the numbers my fingers could be pressing and thought about Max on the other side. I wondered if he missed me, and if I even missed him.

Hanschen setting a cup of coffee on the table next to me shook me from this trance. I looked up to see some color back in his face, and the trace of a smile praying at his lips. “You should probably call him back.”

“I should, shouldn’t I?” 

Hanschen said nothing else. He just turned back to the sink, where he began to wash the dishes that had been filling up. I nodded to myself once more and moved my gaze to the “World’s Best Mom” mug waiting for me, filled with beige, cream filled coffee. 

I wondered how he remembered but I couldn’t.

I had spent seven years forgetting Hanschen Rilow. I had also forgotten that he was always right. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bitches be like: watch rocketman and have relationship issues instead of writing.  
I'm bitches.


	14. Chapter 14

“What have you gotten done today?” Became a staple conversation as the week continued. After Hanschen would arrive in the mornings, we would spend most of the day on opposite sides of the house, tending to whatever meaningless tasks we had decided to accomplish for the day. At first, it was just deciding what to do. Hanschen gave me the space to do so, trying his best to vacuum up decades old dust and shovel the snow in the driveway. He kept out of my way for most of the day, only trying to find me when he left for the night, digging his rental car out of the snow in the driveway before the sun went down and the roads froze over.

“I’m such a bad driver,” He would laugh as I watched him put on his jacket and head to the door. “Don’t be surprised if you gotta haul me out of a ditch in fifteen minutes.” 

But I never had to. I was just glad when he came back in the morning.

I wasn’t sure what he did all day, and he often didn’t tell me everything that happened as he went about the house. Whenever the question of “What have you done all day?” came, he would just shrug.

“Nothing much,” He would lie. But then I would find the fridge restocked with food, or the beds made, or the dishes washed.

I knew if I asked he would just shake his head like some fairies had done it instead of him.

Then came the cleaning. After a few phone calls with Ed that lasted hours, we came to the conclusion that selling the house would be the best option. Not that anyone would want it. But Ed was convinced that it was so ancient and so untouched that some antique freak must want it. We thanked my mom for keeping it that way.

After he had gotten over the mutterings of “shame to see it go”, Hanschen began to help me go through the seemingly endless rooms filled with four generations of memories. And four generations of mess to clear out. 

But still, we went to work, silent at the opposite sides of the house. I had almost forgotten he was there until a day or so into our cleaning, I heard the mumble of music coming from down the stairs. 

_“It's a little bit funny this feeling inside,”_ I could just barely make out the words, crackling and echoing from what sounded like years away. _“I'm not one of those who can easily hide...”_

I stood up from my place on the floor of the study, sunk into the rug since early morning. It was fast approaching sundown now and I had barely made a dent sorting my grandfather’s collection of books. They all seemed too important to throw away, but not important enough to keep. Around ten or eleven I made the mistake of reading some of them and had stayed there ever since, sitting with my legs crossed in warm flannel pajama pants, the boxes marked “KEEP” and “TOSS” barely even half full. 

_ "Don't have much money but boy if I did." _

  
Shaking the sleep from my legs, I walked around my mug of cold coffee and opened the door to the hallway, the music becoming more clear. Elton John’s familiar voice crooned up from the first floor and reverberated down the long hall until it came to my ears, muffled and soft. 

_ “I'd buy a big house where we both could live.” _

“Where the hell did you find that record?”

_ "If I was a sculptor, but then again no..." _

Hanschen turned on his heel to look at me where I stood, a few steps up from the bottom. “Oh, Ernst,” He chirped. He must’ve forgotten about me as well. Around him, the living room had been sorted through, books taken off of shelves and pictures off of the wall. It left nothing but the furniture and a few boxes stacked by the front door. “Hey, I found a huge box filled with tons of old records and-”

  
“Those are my mom’s,” I said, looking at the deteriorating box on the ground at Hanschen’s feet, beside the old wooden record player that had been sitting in the corner of the living room since the fifties. 

_ “Or a man who makes potions in a traveling show.” _

“Oh shit, I didn’t know,” Hanschen immediately moved to stop the player, almost tripping over his own feet. 

But before he could reach to pick up the needle, I took the last few steps of the stairs in a long stride. “No. Leave it on. Please.”

_ “Oh I know it's not much but it's the best I can do. My gift is my song, And this one's for you.” _

After a not so quiet silence, Hanschen cleared his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to another, his cream colored sweater moving with him as he swayed. “Did your mom play this a lot?”

_ “And you can tell everybody this is your song. ” _

“When I was little, sure,” My voice came in almost on top of his. It wasn’t that I wanted to cut him off, it just came out as we stood, both staring at the vinyl spin on the turntable. “Not so much when I got older. But she really loved Elton a lot. I used to think he was my dad.”

We both chuckled. A little half hearted chuckle from the chest. Not cause we were uncomfortable. 

_ “It may be quite simple but now that it's done, I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind , That I put down in words..." _

But because we were busy, being entranced by the tinny piano and remembering, or imagining, my mother swaying as Hanschen was. To the same song, in the same spot, with yellow light flowing through the window and her heart bore to the world.

_ "How wonderful life is while you're in the world." _

“Do you remember Paul Anka, Ernst?”

_ “I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss. Well a few of the verses well they've got me quite cross.” _

I looked at Hanschen for the first time since I had come down the stairs, watching his face. It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a frown. He looked at the record player wistfully, like it was a thousand years away, his cheeks becoming a soft pink as he waited for me to reply. Or maybe he wouldn’t. He seemed content just saying it.

I almost gasped. That was the first time he had acknowledged that we had been together. Not just that we left, that we fell apart, that we broke up. But the first time he had acknowledged a moment where we were together, when we were happy together. 

_ “But the sun's been quite kind, While I wrote this song.” _

“Yeah. I haven’t listened to him since though.”

_ “It's for people like you that keep it turned on. ” _

I felt myself smile as I saw him do the same, his face growing pinker by the second. Nothing else had to be said, but I felt any anger or discomfort that had been floating between us seem to flat away. Dissolve in the light of our smiles and the acknowledgment, no matter how slight, that at one point, we had something that wasn’t completely horrible. Something before we fell apart. 

_ “So excuse me forgetting, But these things I do.” _

“Do you remember the cove?” I asked, so quietly it could have been mistaken for a creak in the house or a skip in the record. But Hanschen still looked at me, his eyes soft with something that could be a decade of affection, but could just be something I thought I remembered. 

_ “You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue." _

“Yeah…” He mused, looking from me, back to the spinning record. “Remember when you crashed your bike.”

“It wasn’t even mine, it was Georg’s.”

“I wonder how Georg’s doing.”

_ “Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean... Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen.” _

“I thought you were gonna die,” Hanschen shook his head as he spoke, just barely chuckling under his words. “ Christ, I was so drunk. I thought you had died and I was going to have to drag your corpse up that hill and explain to them why you were dead, why we were out past curfew, and why I reeked of Absolut.”

_ “And you can tell everybody this is your song." _

“You said seeing me crash made you sober up.”

“I lied,” Another shared, small laugh. 

_ “It may be quite simple but, Now that it's done.” _

Hanschen cleared his throat, his voice popping out with a bit of a shock. “I uhh… I can’t believe you remember I said that.”

_ “I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind. That I put down in words..." _

All I could do was shrug and play off the way my heart was beating like I was fourteen and just locked eyes with the boy acro ss the field in P.E. and wondered why the side of his thigh or the sound of his laugh made me want to hide my face in my hands. “Dunno how I could forget.”

_ “How wonderful life is while you're in the world.” _

“It’s been a long day, I should probably head back to the hotel-”

“You should come get dinner with me!” I said before my brain could even comprehend that words were coming out of my mouth. Hanschen looked at me, pale eyes wide with shock which almost immediately mellowed into a smile. “I mean. You’ve been working hard all day. You’ve helped out a ton. My treat.”

_ “I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind. That I put down in words...” _

He nodded, taking a few steps to the record player before looking back to me. “I’d love that, Ernst.”

_ “How wonderful life is while you're-” _

He pulled the record from the vinyl with a little squeak and the whirring of the turntable stopped. “I assume you’ll put on pants before we go?”

I looked down at the striped red flannel and shrugged. “What’s wrong with these?”

Hanschen didn’t respond. Just laughed. He sounded younger. He sounded beautiful.

The drive to the diner was filled with laughter, our breath coming out in fog puffs as we waited for the heater in my mother’s Volvo to start up. It didn’t seem to get any warmer as we took the tree lined roads, passing the few glances of civilization, a house here, a road there, an abandoned fruit stand once or twice. It was hard to believe that anyone else lived in Randolph until we got to mainstreet, which appeared suddenly along a seemingly empty highway. Before we had found the lights of other humans, it is just us along a road full of my memories. I pointed out as I drove, under the light of the headlights, where I had fallen off my bike, the lonesome church I had attended growing up.

Hanschen chuckled when I pointed down a dirt road we seemed to whizz past. “And that’s where I had my first kiss.”

“Max?” he asked. I nodded. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him lean back in his seat, cupping his hands over his cold lips. “How cute.”

When we actually got to the diner, it was mostly empty. All but one booth were abandoned, and the waitresses looked at us eagerly, as if glad to have something interrupt their night of waiting to close. 

“We used to go here after middle school dances,” I said after we had given a tired teenage girl our order, two cokes and two burgers. “I know it doesn’t look it, but this place was blowing up on those Friday nights.”

“Filled with sweaty kids?” he laughed, his fingers playing with the silverware in front of him. I nodded and leaned back on the squeaky vinyl seat. The place, like everywhere else in Randolph, was frozen in its golden age. Harsh fluorescent lights, sticky tables, fake plants. The ghost of the nineteen fifties haunted the restaurant, with the greatest hits of the seventies radio station playing from muffled speakers. Still, it was the best place to eat in the town after the Italian restaurant closed. 

“I remember I wanted to share a shake with Isabella Vecchio so badly,” I mused, my eyes moving around the while linoleum, to the counter where I had sat, in the stools that were still in the same exact spots I had left them in. “I hadn’t managed to get a slow dance with her, but I was so sure I was gonna double-straw it. Like in the movies.”

“And what foiled your grand plan?” He asked, his head tilting to study the licence plates lining the far wall. 

I couldn’t help but laugh as I continued, flicking my gaze to Hanschen as I inhaled hesitantly. “Well, she had a date. Andrew McCarthy,” I watched Hanschen raise his brows in suspicion as I continued. “And, now that I think about it, Andrew might have been the one I was into.”

“Things like that blur when you’re young,” Hanschen nodded. “You think you want the pretty blond cheerleader, then you realize that the football captain boyfriend is more your speed.”

I bit my tongue before I could ask if Greta was that pretty blond. But he seemed to have forgotten all about her, so I let him keep forgetting and looked to the dusty clock on the wall. 

“But you want both, right?” I asked, not looking at him. 

But from the corner of my eye, I saw him shrug. “Sure,” he mused. “I mean. Are you telling me that you see Natalie Portman and don’t feel a thing?”

“Not my type,” I grimaced. Hanschen just laughed and the conversation was over. 

We let silence sit for barely a moment or two before Hanschen leaned forward, his elbows resting on the white table top. “Did you and your mom ever come here?”

I thought for a moment. I couldn’t count all the times I had gone into the front doors of this diner, how many times I had ordered the same burger and fries. 

“Not enough,” I muttered through an exhale. I saw Hanschen look at me more intently, as if waiting for more. “We didn’t spend that much time together. I mean, we were close but. We could have been a lot closer.”

“Who’s to say it wasn’t enough?”

“Me.”

Hanschen nodded before reaching a hand out, his palm just barely floating over the top of my hand. If I closed my eyes and prayed, I could almost feel his skin ghosting over my knuckles. His warm touch spread over my own cold hand and I could feel what I can only describe as a piece of him reaching out to hold a piece of me that was weeping, rocking itself to sleep because every corner of this town was traced with the unreachable. 

“You’re too harsh on yourself, Ernst.”

And then his hand was gone. Even though I felt him pull away, I swore I could still feel him there, his skin against mine. It was all so familiar. 

So familiar it frightened me.

It frightened me that I wanted to reach out and pull him towards me. I was frightened that the happiest I had been in weeks was sitting across from him, his hand over mine. I was frightened at how easily I fell into him. How it felt like second nature to be held by Hanschen Rilow. 

I could tell he was frightened too. He puffed out a long exhale like he was trying to shake off the thoughts that must’ve been flooding his mind as well as mine. “I think I want a milkshake,” I said after blinking a few times, making himself forget once more. “Where do you think that waitress went off to?”

I was frightened because I would much rather have him bickering with me and pouring my liquor down the drain than making me feel like I was seventeen again. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my logical brain: there's no way to combine your obsession with Elton John and this fucking fic, Lulu
> 
> Monkey Brain (TM): A Nd Y O U C AN TE l L E V EY B OD y


	15. Chapter 15

The night of the diner trip, Hanschen slept at the house. Only after I insisted the entire ride home did he move his things from the basically abandoned Days Inn and into the downstairs guest room that used to belong to my grandfather.  
  
I had told him that I could remember that room, when I was five or six and my mother was still in college. I would spend the days with my Grandfather in that quiet, subdued room. He smiled, endeared to it all, before excusing himself to make “a very important phone call”.  
  
I had assumed it was to Greta until, the next day, he told me at the breakfast table, that I should clear my schedule for that Sunday. I told him I never had a schedule but when I asked what it was for, he just shrugged, offered to pour me more coffee and asked me what I’d be doing that day.  
  
He managed to keep the whole thing tight lipped until Sunday night when Hanschen, who had been practically buzzing around the house all day in anticipation, was frozen, sitting on the couch in the living room, reading some book I had brought from upstairs and looking out the windows expectantly.  
  
He didn’t even notice me standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He just kept looking from the pages to the book to the driveway. I would have been surprised if he was retaining a single word of what he was reading.  
  
“Should I still have a clear schedule?” I asked, smiling when I saw him jump. His head whipped around, turning to look at me over the back of the couch.  
  
A little smile playing at the edge of his lips, he nodded. “Yeah..” Then turning back to the window is smile growing as he looked out on the illuminated porch. “And you should get the door.”  
  
I opened my mouth to ask him what the fuck was going on, but before any words could come out, there was a knock at the front door. I remained frozen for a few moments, looking at grinning Hanschen with raised eyebrows. “What kind of Twilight Zone bullshit is-”  
  
“Don’t be rude, answer the door.”  
  
With hesitant footsteps, I moved to the door, taking a breath and looking once more at Hanschen’s eager expression before turning the knob and-  
  
“Ernst Fucking Robel!”  
  
“Language!”  
  
I didn’t see Melchior at first because he was busy basically charging me with a hug, his long arms wrapping around me with ease and squeezing like he was trying to crush my spine. But I knew it was him after my wide, surprised eyes could focus and I was Wendla, glowing and smiling with a purse under her arm, a huge, pregnant stomach, and two tiny Wendla’s standing on either side, holding her hands in their much smaller, pale little hands.  
  
I let my arms reach up and around Melchior, hugging him back as he grunted into my shoulder. “Oh, man, I missed you, Ernst!” He pulled away, holding me at arms length as he seemed to look me up and down. I finally got to see him now. He looked just like he used to, maybe a bit more tired. Bags formed under his previously vibrant eyes and his light brown waves were now peppered with spots of silver. But it was still Melchior. His smile said that, still a little crooked, a little subdued, like he was going to tell me about his plan to snowboard off of the roof of the cafeteria. “Christ, man. You look great! Where have you been! You still look seventeen!”  
  
Another hug, this time reciprocated, and he let me go. At this point the shock had subsided and allowed me to chuckle out a small. “Melchior… What are you doing here?”  
  
“This guy invited us!” He strutted into the living room like he owned it and pulled Hanschen into a great big bear hug like he had done to me. “Good to see you again, man. Good to see you.”  
  
When I looked back to Wendla she was smiling her same, kind smile. I wondered again, like I had a thousand times before, how such an angel like Wendla found herself with Melchior Gabor. But she was watching him before her soft gaze moved to me, “Nice to see you, Ernst.”  
  
Upon hearing his wife’s voice, Melchior whipped back around, his long limbs seeming to fly out in every direction. “Oh, look at my manners. Ernst, Hans, you both know Wendla.” She smiled and nodded to Hanschen, her hand absentmindedly wandering over her protruding stomach. “And this is Fanny and Daisy.”  
  
The girls, ages six and four respectively, stood on either side of their doppleganger mother, watching me with big, hazel eyes, the only feature they seemed to get from their father. They both had heads full of black waves pulled back into neat little ponytails tied back by pastel colored bows. It felt like a family straight out of an ad for house security. Or furniture or anything else that required a backyard and a barbeque and a golden retriever.  
  
“When Hanschen called me outta the blue and told me you were on our coast, we packed up the girls and Wendla cashed in vacation days. I didn’t believe you were still alive! I thought you disappeared!”  
  
“I’m an artist now.”  
  
“Same thing!” As Melchior laughed, Hanschen went to work helping Wendla tug a suitcase up the steps of the porch from their rented car. “Oh, Fan, help Mommy carry up the bags, okay baby?”  
  
“Mommy…” I stuttered as I watched Melchior bend over and pick up Daisy’s squirming little body, straightening out her dress as I chuckled. “Baby? Who are you?”  
  
“I know, it’s fucking crazy, right?”  
  
Before Melchior could say anything more, Wendla, who was busy telling Hanschen to put the bag anywhere, whipped her head around and hissed another, “Language, Gabor.” like it was second nature.  
  
Melchior laughed, “Sorry, dear.” he turned back to me with raised eyebrows, “ I wouldn’t have thought eight years ago that I’d be a dad-”  
  
“No one would have thought that!”  
  
“-but then after Fan was born it’s all I wanted to do!”  
  
I shook my head and watched the little Fanny he was talking about run behind her mother, eyes wide. Hanschen chuckled, bending down to shake the small girls hand before smiling back to Wendla. “Jesus, Melchi,” I shook my head and noticed that Daisy’s eyes had been following me closely. “Glad you did yourself good on that.”  
  
I tried to avoid thinking for the rest of the night. Like I had been succeeding to do to Hanschen, I was blissfully ignoring what had happened between us seven years ago. I had thought that maybe Melchior had forgotten what occured our senior year, when he successfully attempted to ruin my life. But hell, I thought, maybe everyone was homophobic and bullying their best friend back in the ninties. Clinton was president, I guess you could get away with that sorta shit without having to mention it over a dinner you made while I chatted with your wife and attempted to wrangle your children.  
  
I learned pretty fast that Daisy was the problem child, taking after he father, as Wendla said. They were getting calls almost every day from the private daycare “the girls” were attending, prompting stay at home daddy Melchior to come get a “talk” from the head teacher.  
  
Melchior assured the table later that he was doing the same thing at her age and he turned out fine. Hanschen assured the girls that he was doing that until he was eighteen. It was so strange, hearing the two talk from across the small table, like they had known each other well. Melchior joked how Hanschen was hot now that he got rid of his glasses, Hanschen attempted to reminisce over our horrible English teacher. I wanted to point out that they were never actually friends and spent most of senior year hating each other, but something must’ve changed after I left.  
  
I was assured of this after dinner, when Hanschen insisted on doing the dishes and letting us catch up, leaving a bottle of wine on the table with a polite smile. Then, he stated, he was out of the night, collecting his things and saying, when asked where he was going that he “wanted to have a look around the town” and took off into the already pitch black night.  
Wendla didn’t last too long after he was gone. With the girls falling asleep on top of her, she put them to bed and followed suit before ten.  
  
At first, there was a sense of casual ease between us as we skirted around the past. We talked about anything else. The dinner he had made, how the girls were taking to school, a funny story of Wendla at work or a run in with a nanny. But nothing about us until Melchior, on his third glass of wine for the evening, seemed as though he couldn’t hold it in anymore.  
“You know,” He said after a brief pause in conversation, where in I sat on the couch across from him, staring past his head and out into the windows to the driveway. “When Hanschen first called and said you two were in California, I thought that you two were still together.”  
  
I shook my head, leaning into the large, stuffed cushions. “No, no. We hadn’t spoken to each other since Faraday until New Years.”  
  
“This New Years?” When I nodded, he chuckled, shifting so I practically knew that he was uncomfortable. “Fuck, man, then what’s he doing with you alone in California not even a month later?”  
  
“My mom-”  
  
“He told me.”  
  
I shrugged into my glass, almost amused to see his habit of cutting people off hadn’t yet gone. “He wanted to come out to help. My boyfriend Max couldn’t come.”  
  
I managed to finish that before Melchior interjected. “You have a boyfriend? Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you two been together?”  
  
Another shrug as I took a sip and muttered out, “A while. Six years maybe…”  
  
“Six, damn. Any wedding bells in the future?”  
  
When I shook my head, he raised his eyebrows. “Not for me, no. But Hanschen’s engaged.” He stared at me with wide eyes for a moment before I continued, “To a woman.”  
  
A sudden torrent of laughter from him, maybe a bit too much.”You’re kidding, right?” When I shook my head, he continued. “Well damn. A woman. Never would have thought, huh. So is he still gay or…?”  
  
“You ask pretty dumb fuckin’ questions for someone’s who’s supposed to be smart.”  
  
With a modest shrug, Melchior continued, his hazel eyes casting down to the legs of the coffee table. “You know I just finished my bachelors in December, right?” Now it was my turn to look in disbelief. But a humble nod and he continued. “Yeah, I didn’t start till I was twenty. Then took a year off when Daisy was born.”  
  
“Still Princeton?” He nodded, a bit of Melchior Gabor pride seeping in again. “Did Wendla go?”  
  
“She went first. Between kids. I held down the fort.” A little chuckle and he sighed out. “That woman was going to classes nine months pregnant. She’s crazy. I love her so much.”  
  
I noticed his smile and I could almost remember it from Faraday. When he was talking to us about that beautiful, dark haired girl with the sweet voice. Telling us how she was so different. We didn’t believe him.  
  
“You still got me beat though, like always. I don’t even have a high school diploma.”  
  
His smile fell a bit, turned into a disappointed grin as he rubbed the side of his face, his silver wedding ring grinding over his stubble. “Jesus fuck, Ernst,” he mumbled into his palm before sighing out. He grimaced, as if remembering hurt. “That was a real fuckin move on your part. We couldn’t believe you had left. No one believed me when I told them until we all came back from break and you were still nowhere.”  
  
“How was school after I left?”  
  
I had always wondered that. When I first left, all I wanted to know was if they were all the same. I wanted to know if anyone had learned their lesson, if anyone missed me. I had found myself, that first year, staring at the phone and wondering if anyone would pick up if I called. I never did, couldn’t bring myself to explain something that I didn’t understand either.  
  
His gaze wrapped around the room before falling back to my feet. “It was strange, Ernst. It really fuckin’ was. Hanschen didn’t talk to anybody. I don’t even remember if he was at graduation. Wendla and I were trying to get our shit together. Moritz got a last minute acceptance to a little school in Massachusetts because his dad pulled some strings.” Then, any light from his expression fell. He bit his bottom lip like he was afraid to speak. I was about to ask what was wrong when he took a deep inhale and said in one long breath. “Then not even a year later the accident happened.”  
  
“Accident?”  
  
Melchior looked up at me with creeping surprise. “Oh. Shit. You don’t know.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“Moritz, the poor fucking guy,” A shallow swallow. “He uh… he fell. From some high up school building.”  
  
“Fell?”  
  
“Moritz, killed himself, alright.”  
  
A little outburst, Melchior had raised his voice and was looking back at me with that spark of anger behind his eyes. Or maybe that was some semblance of sadness. He shook his head and it vanished, setting down his now empty glass so he could rub at his lips. I didn’t have to say anything to get him to continue, in a much more muted voice than before. “There was a note but I never was able to get my hands on it. I just wanted to know-”  
  
“He couldn’t arise to everyone’s expectations.” After I spoke, Melchior looked at me with head tilted confusion. “He was always worried about that. You know him. He was never able to be enough. Not when everyone wanted him to fit in their cookie cutter mold.”  
  
“Guess he should have been like you, then.”  
  
A bit of silence. I sipped, I started at nothing. Melchior got up to wander to the door of my grandfather’s room, where his girls had been sleeping. He pressed his ear to the door for a few moments until he was satisfied by the silence and made his slow walk back to his chair, speaking softly as he went, now that the dust of the news had settled. “I saw Hanschen at the funeral. The only other one of our classmates who was there. And he spoke to me like nothing had happened. Like we were a couple of old buddies. Like I hadn’t made your lives hell for no reas-”  
  
“Like how we’ve been talking.”  
  
“I am so fucking sorry, Ernst,” He spoke in long, quiet breaths. His hands stuffed into the pockets of his khaki pants, balled into fists. In him, I could see the boy at the train station. I could see his balled fists over red cheeks, stained with tears like his lips were stained with wine. I could hear the shallowness of breath as he begged. “I really fucked up. I was so stupid. I only thought about myself and I was so angry and so confused.”  
  
“You were a teenage boy.”  
  
“Not all teenage boys ostracize their best friends and push them into running away.”  
  
All I could do was nod, almost noticing the tears in his eyes before he looked away again, sitting down and leaning back before taking a breath and letting the world calm once more. “We’re gonna name the baby Moritz. It was Wendla’s idea. It’s gonna be a boy.”  
  
“I think he would have had a heart attack if you told him that.”  
  
“Good. That idiot.”  
  
And we drank again. And discussed politics and laughed about how Georg switched his major five times. And how the weather was where they were in Seattle. And there was a fresh air to everything we said, like apologizes for seven years of silence.  
  
When the grandfather clock on the far wall struck one in the morning, he went up to join Wendla in bed. Standing in the doorway, across the hallway from my bedroom, he smiled. “Thank you, Ernst. For having us. And for listening to me. No one really does that much.”  
  
From behind my closed door I heard him mutter goodnights to Wendla. I heard their room go silent. Then I heard nothing. Laying in my bed, unable to sleep, I listened to the silence of my paper thin home and wondered why it was so dead even with living things inside it, filling it to the brim.  
  
I heard Hanschen come home. Open the front door at around three in the morning. Without thinking, I got up to greet him, shuffling down the stairs in my pajamas just to look through the darkness and see his form, fast asleep on the couch and breathing slowly and steadily. I wasn’t even sure if he took off his shoes at first. But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw that he hadn’t. He seemed to just collapse right there, the only thing about him still awake was the moonlight fluttering through glass and gracing his cheekbones like they were gifts.  
  
I wasn’t sure how long I stayed out there, sitting on the bottom steps and watching Hanschen sleep. He just looked so beautiful, so quiet.  
  
The house no longer felt silent, but just hushed. It murmured with content breaths and soft gazes. He was home.


	16. Chapter 16

Hanschen came to me with the big revelation not even two days after Melchior had left, hugging me with teary eyes and promising to actually keep in touch.

Not even two full days later, Hanschen was standing in the doorway of the study, one hand on his hip, the other holding out a paper he had folded neatly. 

“What’s that, Hans?” I asked when I looked up from the stack of cardboard boxes I was attempting balanced. I hadn’t seen him all morning and in that time I had managed to clear the whole wall of bookcases.

I expected to see some sort of congratulations in his eyes but he just stared at me, holding out the papers expectantly before speaking in a low voice. “Ernst, I think I found him.”

I quirked a little smile at him at first, shaking my head in confusion and thinking at first it was a joke. But upon seeing his stern face, I immediately realized how wrong I had been. “Oh fuck…” I whispered, taking a few timid steps towards him. “I almost forgot that’s why you’re here.”

No words. He just handed me the paper. His eyes were locked on my face and didn’t leave until I asked him, “How the hell did you find him?”

“Asked around a lot,” He shook his head. “Found your mom’s yearbook and tried to hunt down every guy in it. If they weren’t your father, I asked if they knew who he was. It was mostly phone calls until this guy named John, an old friend of your dads, told me to come by the other night. He told me everything he had on him. But he was positive of who it was.”

I didn’t open the paper at first, just turned it over in my hand again and again. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, my lungs, in the space between my ribs and the ridges of my fingertips. I could feel writing on the other side of the lined paper, the bulging of gel pen words. 

“Come on,” He muttered after I made no motions to open it. “It’s just basic information.”

“Hanschen, this the answer to a question I never asked.”

He nodded, stepping back to lean against the door frame, arms crossed tightly over his broad chest. “I understand, Ernst. Listen, if you don’t want to know, that’s fine. But I came here to find your dad and I finally did it so-”

“I never wanted you to find my dad, I just wanted you around, Hans.”

There was quiet for a few moments, Hanschen filled it with steady breaths, his hands rubbing soft circles in the front of his jeans before his voice came up, cracking a bit under some pressure. “I...I think you need to know. It’s important to me that you know.”

“Why?”

I pushed the paper back out, towards his chest. But he extended his arm as well, softly pushing it back to me. 

“I care about you, Ernst. I think you really need to know.”

I shook my head before moving my eyes from his stern face to the paper in my hand, unfolding it before thinking it.

In long, scrawled letters, the words “Jack Reilly, 171 Hilltop Drive, Lubbock, Texas.”

I read it over and over. The words in dark blue ink. It said nothing at all. Nothing that would let me know who he is. Just a name and an address that was halfway across the country. But it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds there, in my palm. 

“Does he know you have this?”

“No. But we can call him,” He cleared his throat, “Or, you can call him.” Another shake of the head. “No. You have to call him. Then you can go out and see him, I guess.”

“I can’t.”

“Ernst, that’s your father.”

“I just can’t.”

“I will buy your plane ticket out there, you just need to go see him.”

“Hansch-”

“He’s your father. I tore apart this whole town to find him.”

“I never asked to know this, Hanschen.”

“You asked for me,” He began to move around the study, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his eyes on the ground as he whizzed around aimlessly. “You asked me to come, Ernst. You just asked me to come. You said you wanted me and I did the only thing I could do-”

“You could have just been here!”

“And done what?”

“Been with me!” As I spoke, Hanschen stopped. He seemed transfixed by my words, exasperated and sudden as I shook the paper in my hand. “I just wanted you here, Hanschen. You didn’t have to do any of this! It was enough for you to just be here.”

Hanschen nodded, gnawing at his tongue and breathing between gritted teeth. “Jesus,” He muttered after a few seconds. “Ernst, I can’t just come here. I had to have a reason to be here. It wasn’t enough to just show up on your doorstep. I knew you’d try to throw me out.”

“Because I didn’t want you here!”

“What the fuck are you even saying!” He almost screamed at my contradictions. His hands balled into fists at his side, he watched my like a hawk as I practically collapsed into the armchair beside the door. The paper had fallen to the floor, on top of the rug inlaid with dust. His pacing became almost hectic. “You can’t say you wanted me to be here and then say you don’t want me here. You told me you fucking needed me! Why are you saying now that you don’t want me around?”

“Because I love you, you fucking idiot.”

I felt the tears attack my throat before I started crying, my face turning red and blotchy as the hot tears began to trickle, seizing my throat and forcing me to speak. I didn’t even know what I was saying, I just let the words fall out, fumbling and stunted. “I love you and I shouldn’t.”

For a few moments, he just let me cry, my hands over my eyes like I was trying to hide it. Underneath already quivering fingers, my cheeks felt like fire slick with water. I hadn’t cried since the news that Mom died. I didn’t realize that until I was sobbing there, my chest heaving in front of Hanschen Rilow. I couldn’t see him, but I could only imagine the shock or anger painting his face. 

I knew why I was sobbing, the details of it all, but not exactly why now, and why here. I knew it was because of Mom, because of whoever the fuck Jack Reilly was, because of Hanschen Rilow making me realize that love is what I had been feeling since I saw him at my front door, since I saw him, dishelveled and exhausted in his apartment. 

Fuck, I thought, as my breathing became quick and short, maybe I had been feeling it ever since he tossed that crumpled paper at my cheek and looked away as if nothing had happened.

I couldn't hear much over the sound of my heartbeat in my ears, but I expected to hear Hanschen leave the room, the slam of the door, the weight of his footsteps down the stairs.   
But I didn’t hear anything. Maybe, I thought, he was just watching me as I trembled and heaved. 

But then I felt it, a hand on my knee, so soft that it might have been a dream. Then I felt it, his palm over my knee, his fingers press just slightly into the fabric of my pants. I didn’t look until I felt something else press gentle into my lap. That’s when, through my watery gaze, I saw a head of golden blond hair laying on over my shaking lap. His hands clung to me, rubbing little circles with his fingertips on my thighs. His legs folded up beneath him and his eyes closed, he looked so peaceful beside my chaos, holding onto my chaos, cradling my chaos as if I were at peace. 

My sobs had subsided to make way for confusion. And below me, he took a shaky breath and said it. “I need you too, Ernst. I think I need you too.”

I extended a teary hand to touch his hair, feeling soft strands of blond between my fingertips. A jolt of energy flooded from my fingertips to my chest, seizing my heart as if it was the heart of a thirteen year old boy brushing hands with his crush in the hallway. Or the heart of an eighteen year old boy getting kissed by the man he would love of what would feel like forever.   
“You’re it,” I muttered. “You’re it, Hanschen.”

Whatever that meant, I knew he would know, even if I didn’t. 

That’s when I heard his voice break, felt him tremble just a bit before settling himself again. In a breathy, low voice, he continued as if I was the only person to ever exist. “You are the baby in the barn.”

“You remember that?”

“I remember it all,” His grip tightened and his head shifted, so I could feel the tears trickling down from his tightly shut eyes. I didn’t even notice he was crying until I saw the gleam of tears falling from closed eyes and the angelic eyelashes pressing closed over expertly carved cheekbones. “I never meant to leave, Ernst.” 

“I know.”

Then quiet, not silence, but quiet. My hand grazed over his head, down his neck, feeling the warmth of him and the press of his skin. For a moment, I almost remembered Max and how he held me on the kitchen floor. How he had held me for the past seven years. 

It was the first time I had almost remembered Max in days. It was becoming easier to forget him.

And that made me cry even harder.

“I know, I know,” He repeated my words over and over before sitting up onto his heels. He looked me in the eyes, just in the eyes, for what felt like the first time in a while. Or maybe it was the first time he had looked at me like that in a while.

Too long. 

“I know.”

His hands, gentle and soft, reached up to cup my trembling cheeks. Another weak cry and he had pulled our wet faces together, our trembling lips pressing. It wasn’t a kiss as much as a whisper, a tight held promise that I know he couldn’t keep. It was sloppy, filled with stuttering breaths and trembling fingertips meeting each others wet and stained cheeks.

I wanted so badly to love and we loved. I wanted so badly to be held by him for so long without even knowing that is what I wanted. So now, when he was there, kneeling against me and holding onto me like we were going to be broken apart, I didn’t know what to do other than to fall into him. 

It felt like second nature.


	17. Chapter 17

I couldn’t say how long Hanschen had been awake before I woke up the next morning. But he had been awake long enough for him to realize what had happened by the time I woke up, his breathing steady and his grip around my chest strong. 

I realized it too, almost immediately. For a split second, I was confused, seeing the walls of my childhood bedroom but feeling the warmth of another body up against my back. Feeling arms around me, but knowing that they were too large to belong to Max.

Fuck. Max.

I didn’t want to face reality yet. As soon as the thought of Max entered my mind, I shoved it away. Focusing instead on the warmth of Hanschen’s breath on my shoulder and how it combatted the icy chill of the bedroom. 

There had always been a draft. And a leak in the roof.

Hanschen felt it too, pulling me close and tight to his bare chest once I woke up, as if to attempt to silence his mind by filling it with me.

I wanted this to be true. I wanted to turn around and to kiss him and to lay there in his arms all day, only getting up to fall back down with him sooner or later. I wanted it to be like it should have been. I wanted this to be the new reality.

His lips pressed to my shoulder and I was pulled back to this life once more. The decisions had been made. Too much, too much.

I remembered how Max had kissed the same shoulder dozens of times, how his hands had grazed over it at least a hundred times, how he held me like this at least a thousand mornings. 

“You should go.”

“I know.”

He didn’t say anything more. His hands slid out from around me, he shifted away from me, tugging himself out of the bed with a loud creak that shattered the illusion that this was how it was meant to be. 

I didn’t watch as he got dressed in yesterday's sweater and jeans. Instead, I just listened, imagining, first, how beautiful his body must’ve looked and how beautiful it had looked in the glass cut moonlight the night before.

Then, I stared up at the print.

It had been there, above me on the slanted ceiling, for years, decades now. Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I used to think it looked like a dream but now it was a nightmare, as the image of it was joined with the sound of shuffling feet going out my door and down the hallway.   
I laid in bed a bit longer, until his warm inprint had left the sheets beside me. That’s when I forced myself upright, putting on my own, fresh clothing and wondering how long it would take him to leave.

The answer was not too long at all. He was dressed, packed, and in the living room within thirty minutes. That’s where I found him. He saw me at the top of the stairs and stopped in his tracks, looking up at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen behind a pair of glasses. He must’ve slept in his contacts. 

I wanted to see him like this every day, disheveled hair, glasses, sleep still in his eye.   
I could imagine sitting across the breakfast table with this Hanschen. Enjoying coffee and listening to the radio and wondering how I got so lucky.

“If I found you sooner, would things be different than they are now?”

“Yes.”

“If I ran away with you when I should have…”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye, Ernst.”

Nothing else was said. I watched him trudge out the door and to his car from the top of the stairs, my arms crossed and my heart threatening to pound me to death.

I stayed there until I saw the car turn down the driveway and towards town, disappearing behind trees. 

That’s when I broke. Shattering there on the steps. No tears came out, none could. I was left to sit with my head against the railing of the stairs and wonder what I did to deserve this.

Everything, my own mind answered. You have done everything wrong. And now you must be haunted for it.

Haunted by a ghost that you love. 

Taking place of the tears I could not cry was grief, a low hanging worry that hit every time I saw the telephone hanging on the wall. Knowing that Max was there, on the other side of the wire, on the other side of the country.

For a moment or two, I blamed him. If he hadn’t been so far, so distant, so Max.

It took some time for me to peel myself from the step, to realize that this was my fault, not Max’s , not Hanschen’s. My fault and my fault alone.

I couldn’t say how long I stared at that telephone after getting up. I rehearsed over and over what I was going to say to him. Saying nothing wasn’t an option. I had to call him, I thought. There was no way I could sit through another hour of silence without losing my mind. 

I had always been like that. King of A Guilty Conscious. Mom used to joke that she could tell I had done something before I even did it. I got mopey and guilty even for thinking about doing the wrong thing.

But here I was, sleeping in bed with the worst thing possible. 

I rehearsed what I would say to him.

“Max, I fucked up.”

True. 

“I slept with Hanschen.”

True. 

“I couldn’t help it.”

False. I could help it. I was a horrible liar.

“I fucked up.”

That was the closest to the truth I could get before I imagined his face. I had to do this over the phone because that was I couldn’t see his expression contort from anger to sadness, watch him bury his face in his hands like I had and cry his angry tears, the frustrated tears that flowed down his cheeks after long days and hard talks. 

He would curse me out. Nothing that wasn’t true. But I could take that as long as he wasn’t looking at me as he told me I was the asshole I knew I was. 

Fuck, I thought suddenly. I don’t even know what city he’s in tonight. Where the fuck do I call-  
The phone rang.

It happened to fast that it scared me, freezing me in place as I just stared at it, attached to the wall in front of me. After my second’s hesitation, I picked it up, my mind running to a million places still, not even pausing to think that it could have been Max until I heard his voice. 

“Hey, Ernst? How are you feeling, babe?”

“Max!” I felt my throat tighten as I attempted to find a footing in this world. “ I was uh.. Just thinking of calling you.”

He chuckled on the other side. I couldn’t believe he still lived in a reality where nothing had happened. “I’m a mind reader. How’s your morning?”

“Fine. Where are you right now?”

“We’re playing our last show tonight in New York. Then tomorrow morning, I’m getting on a plane to Sacramento.”

Fuck. I looked around the house. It must’ve reeked of Hanschen. It had Hanschen coming out of every doorway, sitting around every corner. This house was contaminated beyond belief. He couldn’t come here. No, no, no.

“No!” A pause, I cleared my throat. “That’s so expensive, Max. I’ll be back in New York by the end of the month you’ll see me th-”

“What the fuck has gotten into you, Ernst? I wanna see you now! I miss you, babe. Plus, I should be out there. I should’ve been out there with you this whole time. This tour couldn’t come at a worse time.”

I couldn’t tell him just how right he was. 

“Okay, Max. I’ll see you then.”

“I’ll see you soon, Ernst. I love you. I can’t wait to see you again.”

I nodded, the words getting caught in my throat before coming out, choked and messy. “I love you too.”

I was a terrible liar.


	18. Chapter 18

It was strange. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel drawn to Max. When his rented car rolled up to the front yard and parked in the spot Hanschen’s had been in just the night before, I smiled. I opened my arms wide to him, pulling him into a hug and feeling a hot sigh of relief against by chest.

“Ernst….” He muttered, his voice muffled by the cloth of my shirt. I reached up to comb my fingers through his hair and noticed the dyed black hair had grown out to reveal bright red roots. I looked over his shoulder to notice how he had thrown aside his backpack as he rushed to me on the porch, how he seemed to shake with joy in my arms.

Before, I would never have noticed the small things. I would be too busy being enraptured by Max’s beauty and blinded by love. I would be shaking, crying, kissing him breathless. 

But now, I just ran my fingers through his hair. “Max. I missed you.”

The guilt took time to set in, but it came. As soon as I saw him, smiling, bouncing with life into the kitchen, insisting we go out, get food, celebrate finally being together again.

“Then can we at least go get drinks?” He asked once I shot down the idea, sitting down on the couch and watching him move in and out of the open door to the guest room. The perfectly made bed and dusted furniture, he would never suspect that Hanschen had been sleeping there before him.

“I’m not drinking.”

He paused, looking me over with wide eyes. “You’re kidding, right, Ernie?”

I shrugged, not really looking at him but instead looking past him, at the chip in the wallpaper on the wall. I’d have to peel that off if I wanted to sell it. I would much rather think of that than think of Max, his hands on his hips and his eyes glued to me in confusion. He huffed, obviously pissed that I didn’t respond to his glare, and moved back into the bedroom. 

THere was silence for a few moments. Actual silence, uncomfortable silence, the kind of silence that had never happened before, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it now. Now, I just shifted in my seat and watched him move quietly around the room before coming back to the living room, his arms crossed. “What’s wrong, Ernie?”

“What?”

“Something’s up,” He moved behind where I sat on the couch, his hands beginning to knead and rub against my shoulder blades. I felt myself flinch away subconsciously, leaning away from his soft, loving hands. “You’re all distant. I missed you so much and-”

“It’s almost like my mother just died.” His hands froze where they were before he slowly pulled them away, moving so slightly that he might have thought I was about to shatter. 

His voice came across thin, a wave of realization making his words tremble. “Oh, I don’t…. I almost…”

“Forgot?”

He didn’t say anything. I just listened to his footsteps move away from me, into the kitchen where he busied himself with something I felt he had no right to even look at. It felt wrong to have him in the house. Dirty. 

I thought how often he had been there before. How he would come with my on the holidays. How normal it used to feel to see him and Mom chatting on the couch. Or to drive around the empty roads with him until the sun came up and we would fall asleep cuddled up on my tiny bed. Or how hard it was to hold in my laughter when Mom tried to buy him a good gift, but never knew him quite well enough and always settled for a sweater a few sizes too big that Max would end up adoring for years to come.

But now, it was all wrong. It felt like he was intruding on a house in mourning, empty. It was so strange that when Hanschen was here, it felt like he belonged.

Hanschen didn’t just sleep with me, he crawled up inside of me and made a home in my brain. All I could think of when I saw Max was Hanschen, wishing he was Hanschen, comparing him to Hanschen, then cursing myself for being so disgusting.

I asked to sleep alone about an hour later, after circling around awkward small talk and a few stories about tour. Max just nodded, “Take as much time and space as you need, babe. I know you’ve been alone for weeks and that’s a sort of tough thing to wrap your head around. I’m just glad I’m here for you now.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, walking towards the stairs, my eyes staying locked on the floor below me. “I’m glad you’re here too.”

It felt even worse to lie to him.


	19. Chapter 19

Max left in the morning, muttering that he was going to go meet up with his dad for the day. I didn’t question it, knowing well that he hated his father more than anything else. I thought it was better to have him gone after a night of sleeping apart and a morning of awkward small talk. He made coffee as I busied myself with anything I could. The conversation lay dead between us, about this year’s snowfall and the storm they drove through on the way to Trenton. I think I chuckled at the right times, I wasn’t sure, I hadn’t been listening.

I remembered all the hours we had spent before, talking about anything and everything we could think of because we were just so eager to speak to one another, to understand each other’s minds. Even after we knew everything there was to know about each other, we’d talk about anything else. We’d make fun of the people walking down the street as we sat on the fire escape, we’d dissect the newest album by an artist we liked song by song, we’d make grand plans for the future we intended to keep.

And even in silences, we were speaking. In silences, we used to reach other to each other with comforting smiles, with the knowledge that we could spend days on end just sitting together without saying a word.

Max felt like a picture hanging crooked on the wall now, not a nuisance, but not part of the conversation. He was part of the background of the house. I felt like he didn’t completely belong.

He felt this too. When he left, he moved to kiss me goodbye as he always had, getting up on his tip toes and expecting me to close the last inch or two. For the first time, I hesitated, looking down at him with his eyes closed and his lips just barley parted. I hoped he hadn’t noticed and bent down to kiss him anyway.

“I’ll be back later. Get your rest, Ernie.”

When he left, the house didn’t feel more empty. It felt just as empty as before, when Hanschen first left. 

I decided not to think of either of them. I wanted to think about anything else and for a while, I succeeded, wasting my mind instead on what to put into which boxes and where to put the boxes once they were packed, continuing to fill up trash bags to add to the collection I was amassing in the hallway upstairs. I was up there, on the landing, when the phone rang. I was busy tying off a bag filled with my old elementary school art projects and spelling tests, so I just let it ring, listening to the answering machine beep just as I made my way back down the stairs. 

“This is the Robel’s. Leave a Message.”

“When we two parted in silence and tears, Half broken-hearted to sever for years,” I recognized Hanshen’s voice immediately and stopped, standing only a few feet from the machine. My eyes trained on the running tapes as I listened to his weak, crackling voice. “Pale grew thy cheek and cold, colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold sorrow to this.”

I could hear cars passing in the background, honking and rumbling engines. It made sense, he wouldn’t dare call me in his own home. Too ashamed. 

“The dew of the morning sank chill on my brow-- It felt like the warning of what I feel now.” I could tell he wasn’t reading this. He had it memorized. His vice was too sure, too intent to be reading it. I could practically see him, his eyes screwed shut and his hands cupping the receiver up against this face. “Thy vows are all broken, and light is thy fame; I hear thy name spoken, and share in its shame.”

I wondered if people were looking at him as they walked past his phone booth. I wondered what they were thinking when they saw him, cradling the phone and speaking in a voice just above a whisper. They could probably tell he was keeping secrets. He was an expert at that. 

“They name thee before me, a knell in mine ear; a shudder come o'er me-- Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, who knew thee too well-- Long, long shall I rue thee, too deeply to tell.”

For a moment, I remembered the notes he had passed me. How I kept them pressed between the pages of sketchbooks, only taking them out to study his handwriting, feel the indents the pen had left, and try to feel him through them. Then, I saw him at his desk. I saw him, glasses low on his nose and his lamp illuminating the room in gold. 

“In secret we met-- In silence I grieve,” I had burned those notes the day I got to New York, lighting them up in the sink in my motel room and watching the words he had written write and disappear against ash. “That thy heart could forget, thy spirit deceive.”

I don’t think I could have picked up the phone if I wanted to. To know that he knew I was listening, it was all too much. I preferred this, keeping it all in the air, keeping him unsure if was even there. That way, he had no power over me. 

At least, he thought he didn’t. 

“If I should meet thee after long years, how should I greet thee?--With silence and tears.“

Then, quiet. A honk in the background, his heavy breaths. I wondered how long I had been standing there, staring at the whirring machine. 

“Ernst, I think I need y-”  
A click and a beep. The machine turned off. He had run out of time. 

I didn’t collapse or sob or fall apart. I didn’t even think of crying. I didn’t think of anything accept what I was going to say to Max. There was no way I was going to let him continue to live in a world where this didn’t happen, where I am innocent and mourning and just going through a rough spot.

There was no way I was going to be able to go back to living life with Max as I had. I thought, maybe I could ignore the thought of Hanschen, but I would not be able to ignore the fact that now I was aware that I was not in love with Max.

Everything felt so fake. I knew this was no way to live.

When he came home, I was ready. I had been sitting on the couch for some time before he finally opened the front door, talking instinctively about how it was gonna snow soon and town was desolate before he finally looked at me and seemed to realize. 

“Ernst?” He asked, stopping halfway through taking off his coat. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t look at him, I looked past him, my eyes locked on the trees outside the window being pushed and pulled by the wind. I took a breath before reciting what I had been rehearsing all afternoon. “Max, before you came, Hanschen was here and-”

“I knew it.”

His statement shocked me for a moment, stopping me before I could say the part I feared the most. That’s when I finally looked at him. His thin arms crossed over his chest and his intense eyes were trained on me. He looked the same as the night we first kissed, when he stared at the road in front of his truck like he wanted to murder it. I know now it was just because he was nervous. He didn’t seem the slightest bit nervous now. 

“I fucking knew it,” He said after I failed to respond. “I knew this was going to happen from the second he showed up on our doorstep. I was an idiot for thinking you wouldn’t fall for it.”

“Fall for wh-”

Max’s voice raised, smothering mine. He wasn’t yelling, but he was speaking with more speed and anger than I ever knew him to hold. “He’s using you and you let him! I can’t believe I let myself believe you were stronger than that. That you loved me enough to- Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

Only then did I realize I had been looking at his shoes instead, studying the heels of the boots and the way they sat on the warped wood of my floor. When I looked up, I saw that his face had flushed red and his hands were stuck into fists. “I am such an idiot,” He hissed. “I am a fucking idiot for thinking that you ever loved me.”

“Max, I-”

“Did you ever love me, Ernst?”

I had been wondering that all day. I never felt for him the same way I felt about Hanschen, but that was impossible, they were such different people. I doubted my love because how could I have loved Max when I never stopped loving Hanschen. 

My silence spoke for me. He leaned back, sighing and shaking his head before continuing. “I should have fucking known. I would have given up anything for you. I would have done anything for you, I would do anything for you. You’re so fucking selfish, you couldn’t give him up for your own sake, much less mine.”

“Max, I think I loved you.”

He looked at me for a few moments, my honesty stopping him short. In a voice so quiet I could barely hear it, he spoke. “But you know you love him?”

I couldn’t respond. I just let my head fall into my hands, rubbing my temples and wishing this all would just disappear. 

“Did you sleep with him?”

More silence. 

“I should have known. I should have known. I am so fucking stupid for letting you do this to me.”

“I didn’t mean to-”

“But you did and you cannot take that shit back,” That’s when he started moving. I heard his footsteps move to bedroom and looked up again, watching him rush around the other room, repacking all the shit he had unpacked barely twenty-four hours before. 

I cleared my throat before standing, doing my best to hold back the tears that begged to fall. “Max, what are you doing?”

“I refuse to let you leave me for Hanschen Rilow again,” He called from the room and before I knew it, he was in the doorway, his backpack over his shoulder. This time, he was the one not looking at me. He busied himself instead with collecting his things, putting on his coat, finding his car keys. 

“Again?”

“I am not a dumb teenager anymore, Ernst. I know I deserve better than this. You cannot do this to me twice.”

I didn’t know what to say so I said nothing as he walked toward the front door. When he finally stopped moving and turned to me again, he spoke in a quiet, hiss, sure of every word coming out of his mouth. “Hanschen Rilow is going to keep lying to himself until he is dead. You know that, right? And you can’t love someone when all you do is lie.”

Max didn’t let me say anything. He wanted his last words and he got it, slamming the door behind him and taking off down the porch. Down the same steps I sat on when I told him I couldn’t love because of a boy at my school named Hanschen. Then, he had smiled, and wished me luck and I watched him get in his truck and drive down my driveway.

I didn’t watch him this time.


	20. Chapter 20

“Hello?”

“Hey, Matt, is Ed home?”

“Oh hiya, Ernst!” His voice suddenly became light, chirping on the other side of the phone. “Yeah, I’ll go get him for ya.”

I made a promise to myself to only call Ed when I was lonely. But because I had felt nothing but loneliness all month, I had settled with calling only once a week. 

“He’s a little busy finishing up an email, he’ll be down in a second,” Matt said after a few moments of dead air. 

I was quick to respond, twisting the cord in my finger repeatedly. “I don’t want to be a bother, I’ll just call back late-”

“Oh no no no!” Matt insisted almost immediately after I began speaking. “No, you’ll never be a bother, Ernst. Ed loves talking to you. You’ve been helping out a lot, just having someone to talk to ya know?” 

I nodded, but then realized he couldn’t see me and began to trip over my words, “Yeah, I get it.”

“You know, we have an extra room if you want to come up and visit. Maybe just for a week or something like that.”

Biting at my lip, I replied as graciously as I could. “Thank you, Matt. I think that would be nice.”

He didn’t say anything else. The next thing I heard was a slight shuffle and then Ed’s voice, deeper and more subdued than Matt’s, “Hey kid, what’s up?”

I think Ed knew why I called. I think he could tell in the way I described my mundane days or packing and sorting and cleaning. I think he knew that he was my only outlet besides just screaming into the sky, so he did his best to keep my mind off of anything serious, choosing instead to go back and forth telling stories and making jokes and recollecting our days. Mom was only mentioned in passing when he was talking about how she used to help him sneak out or when I would remember the time she hit a cow driving home and the cow didn’t even notice. 

This was how it always went and today was no different. Ed didn’t need to know about Hanschen or Max or anything else and I didn’t need to tell him. He was my own pocket of the world that didn’t have the names of those men tattooed all over it. The house reeked of Hanschen, the streets sang about Max. But he, in Chicago and in ignorance, was his own.   
And I was so grateful for that.

That was, until the conversation lulled and he cleared his throat, ticking nervously before asking. “So, uhh, Ernst… Have you talked to your dad yet?”

It caught me off guard. I hadn’t thought of my father or the possibility of speaking to him since Hanschen had left. I began to try to speak, attempting to form sentences and giving up once Ed started to speak again. “A guy called me maybe a month ago. He said he was looking for your dad’s contact information and asked me if I had anything.” Another little pause and Ed began again, his words hurried. “I was just wondering because I didn’t know you had been looking for him.”

“I wasn’t, Hanschen was.”

“Who?”

My gaze raced around the room, attempting to find focus and hold onto anything I could. My mouth moved without a connection to my brain. “Well, he’s uh… He came up too… He’s a friend from school and he uh…”

“Well, if you’re gonna reach out to him, I think you should.” Ed’s tone was different, knowing. “I don’t know where he ended up but, he probably hasn’t heard about your Mom yet. And-”

“Then why should I be the one who has to tell him?”

My voice raised, becoming much more antagonistic than I would have liked it to be. Both Ed and I were taken aback for a moment before I collected myself and said, in a voice barely above a whisper: “Okay. You’re right. I think I’ll call him.”

Our goodbyes were uncomfortable. I think Ed knew me better than I did, telling me that things would get better before hanging up.

I had almost forgotten about the slip of paper upstairs in my grandfather’s study. It had fallen to the floor and been swept and shoved into the corner of the room as the days passed, folding and wrinkling as it went. I didn’t even notice it until I was looking for it, reading over and over the name and number on it. 

Calling wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I expected some struggle as I dialed the number and listened to the phone ring. But my body seemed to click into autopilot. It didn’t even feel real until the ringing stopped and a gruff voice on the other side asked. “Hello?”

“Hi..uh…” It only then hit me that this was reality and I had to speak, to form sentences. “Is there a Jack Reilly there?”

“Speaking.”

I went silent for a moment, letting the reality sink in that this was my father on the other side. I had imagined what he sounded like, what he looked like. I had made an entire imaginary reality of this man and now, there he was, listening to my shaky breathing as I grabbed ahold of the words I was saying. “I’m Ernst. I’m Robin Robel’s son.”

There was a pause. I could hear him on the other side, a shift in his breath and a sudden sense of fear. I wondered what he had been doing. Was he watching TV, making dinner, doing the dishes, when he picked up a phone call he thought was inconsequential? What did the room look like that he was in as he looked around it, trying to reassess his reality?

When Jack spoke again, he spoke quickly. I heard the twang of Texas in his voice. “Listen, bud, I don’t know what you’re calling me for but I’m not-”

“She died two months ago.”

More quiet. I stared straight ahead, at the wall that had previously been covered in all the pieces I had entered in the county fair over the years that were now in boxes. He sighed, I wondered why now I couldn’t imagine his face. I guess he didn’t sound like how I imagined, so I thought he must not look like how I imagined either. I wondered if anything I thought was right. 

“Chirst…” Was the first thing he grumbled after what felt like an hour’s pause. “I’m sorry about that, kid. She was…. She was so young.” His tone had become softer. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was close to tears. “What...What happened?”

“Heart issue. Artery abnormality.”

He was quiet again before saying, “Well, I’m sorry, kid.”

“Yeah, yeah, me too.” 

It felt long until he spoke again, his tone a bit robotic, like he felt obligated to speak. “Well, Ernst right?” When I confirmed, he continued. “ Ernst, I guess you probably should… tell me about yourself.”

I wanted to tell him what if he wanted to know anything about me, he should have stayed. But I didn’t. That was no fight I wanted to get into now. I could tell he was still shocked, and it was useless to pick a fight with a man over something he did twenty five years ago. So I tried to tell him as best I could what he had missed. Without much mention of Mom, I told him how I grew up, the art business and New York, how old I was, when I had been accepted to Faraday. At the mention of dropping out, he stopped me. “Well, why did you drop your senior year?” 

I bit my cheek before answering. “A friend of mine made me realize I was unhappy there,” I choked out the reply. I couldn’t help but look over to the door Hanschen had walked out of and the morning sun shining behind it, illuminating the living room in brilliant yellows. “It wasn’t where I belonged. I wasn’t wanted.”

“Sure, but you were almost done with your senior ye-”

“I was unhappy.”

“Well, now you don’t even have a high school diploma!”

“And?” He made a noise as if to continue, but my own voice stopped him, speaking without even thinking. “If you were in my life, you would have the right to question me. But you left, and Mom had to be there my entire life, alone. She talked me through it and she was there for me and she understood why I had to do that. If you were there with her, you would have the right.”

“Ernst, kid, listen-”

“Don’t call me ‘Kid’ like I’m your fucking son!”

“You are!”

I couldn’t help but laugh almost, biting at my bottom lip and letting the words fall through, “I would be if you didn’t run off.”

“Listen, Ernst,” he practically spoke over me. “You sound like a great ki-” He stopped himself before stating in very plain words. “A great young man. But you don’t understand. I just couldn’t be there even if I wanted to! My parents found out and-”

“I’m gay.”

The phrase hung heavy between us. I didn’t even realize tears were falling down my face until there was a pause for the first time in a while. The storm of rushed words and angry voices had stopped and I was shaking, feeling my bones vibrate just below the surface of my skin. When he was speechless, I continued. “That’s why I left. Because I am gay and I was in love with a beautiful boy my senior year,” The tears began to choke me, stuttering my speech. But the words had to keep coming. I had no choice but to speak, my words shaking like my hands. “And I got to love that beautiful boy until everybody knew that I loved him. And they forced me out. They hated me so much. And I thought the world hated me. So I ran off, and I lost that boy. And Mom was there. And she loved me and she called me every week and when I met another boy she loved him. Because that boy was kind and gentle and he loved me the way I needed to be loved. But then I lost her. And now I’ve lost the boy who loved me because I never stopped loving the beautiful boy from Faraday. But now, I’ve lost him too. I have absolutely fucking nothing but this old house outside of this ancient town that is falling apart around me. And if you had stayed, I would have you too. But you’re so filled with excuses that you could never be here, not even now. You don’t have to raise me or care about me, Mom did all of that for you. All you had to do was be here and you’ve had every chance in the world to be here. At any time you could have come by, or sent a letter, or at least called to say you’re sorry.”

I hadn’t realized how long I had been talking until I stopped to breathe, my face had become red and Jack was quiet. Busy listening I hoped. But as the silence wore on, the reality of my words sunk in. As my breathing calmed and my sobs softened, I recalled the words I said, practically yelled, to the man who was my father. 

But all he said was: “I better let you go, Ernst. Goodnight.”

And he hung up, leaving nothing but me and my fragile breathing against the dial tone. 

I hung up immediately after him, slamming the phone into the receiver. For a while, I felt a hurricane of emotions I couldn’t explain. Some rage, some sadness, some regret. But mostly, it was shock. Shock that I spoke truth before I even knew it. I suppose some part of me knew it, but I hadn’t thought it so clearly. And I never dreamed I would say it.

I was angry until I realized what Mom would think. Standing there, in the living room that she had stood in for decades before, I could practically see her in front of me. A novel in her lap and her legs folded up beneath her on the couch. I could almost hear her tell me that anger will get me nowhere, that I needed to sit and calm down.

After this moment, I felt the weight of my angry words lift off of my shoulders and a rush of relief hit me like a bullet. If Mom was ever a ghost, she haunted me that night, taking my rage from me and gifting me with the bliss to sit down and understand that I knew myself for the first time in my life.

I had never wanted to go to church until that day. That day I put on my winter coat and walked to the towering brick building that haunted the outskirts of Randolph. And although no service was occuring, the doors were open with a sort of small town friendliness that pulled me in and held me close. I wasn’t sure if it was praying that I did as I sat in the pews, but it was something, my hands in pockets and my head bowed. Perhaps I just meditated, breathing in the stale air of the high ceilinged church and hoped again to feel Mom as strongly as I had before.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what’s good this chapter took me ten days to write cause i rewrote it 3 times. anyway, i’m posting this on a bus at 2 am. the grind.

The letter came the day I left, perched atop the pile of junk mail and catalogs. I opened it in the living room, among the stacks of boxes I theat held everything in the home worth holding. I had finished the night before, putting into boxes everything in the home except the suitcase I would be taking back to New York. 

It was written on stationary paper, the customizable kind that middle aged women love, with the top reading “Jack + Elaine Reilly” in cursive font. I shrugged at the fact that I had a step mother and continued on to the letter.

‘Dear Ernst,  
I am sorry for my reaction the other day. You can only imagine how shocked I was to be given that much information at once. But I can wholeheartedly say that I am proud of the man I think you have become. Your mom did an excellent job of raising you and put a very good head on your shoulders. Please continue to make her proud and find your happiness, no matter what man or what form it is in.   
Call me soon. I would enjoy getting to know you more. It has been a long time without you in my life and I think it would be nice to have you in it for once.  
We also have plenty of room out here in the ranch if you feel like a visit.  
-Jack R.’

Reading his name, it was hard for me to see it and think ‘Dad’. He still felt like a stranger, but I knew he was in my blood. Even if I doubted Hanschen at one point, I knew now that he was my father. There was something in his words, a sincerity that I had never felt before. This was not how one cared for a stranger, this is how someone cares for their kin, their blood. It settled into me during the long flight home, the feeling I had never felt before of having someone, a man, a father, who wanted me. I had always been content with my mother, she always did more than enough for me, ensuring that I had the best childhood possible. But this was different, a good different, like a little village at the top of a deserted mountain that I had been stranded on since her death.

This was all I thought about as I went from the airport to my apartment, automatically catching taxis and getting on trains. No thought had to be put into something something I had done thousands of times before. That was until I unlocked the door for the first time in months and realized that it was empty. 

To an untrained eye, Max’s absence was unnoticeable. He left almost everything, all the furniture we bought together, all the things he could easily claim were his without any protest from me. It looked like he only took the things he needed, the things that mattered, the things I immediately noticed. The coffee maker was now just an empty spot on the counter, the ashtray no longer blocked the windowsill, the expensive stereo system he bought with the money he didn’t have had been lifted from its home on my desk.   
The corner of the living area that had become his guitar corner looked naked, his prized Les Paul and Telecaster taken off the wall and their hooks leaving little screw holes. If it weren’t for those little markers, his disappearance would be overlooked by anyone else.

But I saw it immediately. To me, the apartment was hollow, gutted by his leaving. His half of the closet, his drawers of the dresser, they screamed out to me that I was alone. I was alone in Faraday, I was alone in California, I was alone here. Our tiny studio felt cavernous as it told me that I would always be alone, I was meant to be alone.

I didn’t stay long. It became unbearable soon after I entered, sitting on out queen sized bed that felt like it was miles wide and pacing the vast three foot space between the couch and the kitchen door that Max or I would always block for the other. It felt like he would be there any moment, opening the door with arms full of groceries and smiling at me and telling me the story of his day. Or opening a bottle of wine in the kitchen and telling me to put on some music to celebrate me coming home.

I didn’t call Ilse to tell her I was coming by. And she didn’t ask for an explanation when she opened the door to see my face for the first time in months, She just smiled, hugging me and inviting me in with a sort of knowing gentleness. With no questions asked, Martha, who had been in the middle of baking cookies, ushered me to their kitchen to ask me about the trip out west. It was all very friendly at first, how they had missed me, how they were hoping I was feeling better and rested. But I could tell, I could see it on Ilse’s face that this was all common courtesy. It wasn’t that they had forgotten to mention Max, they were just avoiding it. And narrowly doing so. A few times, Martha almost dropped his name, when she was going to ask about what ‘you guys’ were going to do about the house, then immediately corrected herself to ‘you’. 

Ilse, on the other hand, was ready to talk about him, she just wasn’t going to be the one to bring him up. She waited patiently until I said it, treating me as if I was a fragile snowflake that would melt under the heat of Max’s mention.

He didn’t come up until around one am, when I asked if I could spend the night and Ilse asked why.

“I can’t go back to the apartment,” My voice felt as if it was getting weaker with each word. “It’s hard to be in there and know that he’s not….”

I didn’t say his name, but she knew. She looked to the bedroom door that Martha had walked through about an hour before, wishing us a goodnight. Then, she spoke in cold, deliberate words, “You know, Ernst, you really fucked him over.”

“Hmm?”

I wasn’t defending myself, I knew she was true. But I could tell she was going to continue, these words had been floating in the air between us all night, she was just the one to say it, spelling it out in phrases she had been practicing in her head for hours. “Like, the night he came back from visiting you he came here too. And he was just ruined. It was like he started crying on the west coast and hadn’t stopped. He felt so used, so useless. It hurt to watch, you know. Cause I could tell he still loved you and he probably does.” She stood up from where she sat beside me on the couch, her baggy sweatpants hanging low on her hips. “And Ernst, I love you. I know you’re not a bad person. But you really fucked up this time.”

“You don’t get it, Ilse. You weren’t there. If you saw- If Max saw-”

“Saw what? Hans?” I went quiet, but not intentionally. Too filled with hapless frustration, I sputtered out a few nonsensical defenses before she began again. “Listen, I don’t care if you love the guy. It honestly doesn’t matter. There are better ways to handle that kinda stuff, Ernst. Talk to him.”

“I did tell him!”

“Eventually! You told him eventually.” She looked away, pacing the living room with her arms crossed tight. She would have reminded me of a school teacher or an angry mom if she didn’t have safety pins in her ears and a new stripe of red dyed into her buzzcut hair. “And you didn’t have to sleep with the guy first. He’s a fucking lawyer, for fucks sake. That’s the lowest you can sink.”

I used to agree with her on things like this. We shared the twinkle in our eye of ‘fuck authority’ when we first met, pulling us into a friendship built on heated political discussions and glaring at cops. 

But she was always Max’s friend first. Ever since the three of us met at the tiny basement concert Max dragged me to a few months after he moved to New York. Their bond was stronger, their laughs longer, their loyalty deeper. I could tell in the way she was looking at me that when his heart broke, so did hers. 

Then suddenly, her face softened. And she sat down on the couch beside me, keeping more space between us but I could tell in the way she gnawed at the inside of her cheek and the sigh she let out that she was also thinking of our years of friendship. “Listen, Ernst, dude,” She sighed out, rubbing her face before continuing. “I know this is fucking crazy. And I can tell you must feel like shit about everything. And Max feels like shit and we all feel like shit but….” She paused and looked up at me, a little smile cracking her stoic features. “I forgot where I was going after the feel like shit part.” 

We laughed. A cautious laugh that always came in response to the first joke after a tense moment. She nodded a few times, mostly to herself, and reached out to touch my hand that was resting on my knee. I didn’t realize until she touched me that I had been anxiously rubbing the already worn denim of my jeans.

That’s when the tears finally came, trickling slowly. It wasn’t the violent, angry, bitter tears I had become accustomed to. Or the anxious, unconscious tears that I always tried to hold in. They were relieving tears. No shuddered breaths or ugly sobs, just serene tears falling down my face. Ilse noticed after a few sniffles and sprang into action, putting her arm around me and pulling me into a hug. I sighed into her shoulder and the fabric of her hoodie. “God, I feel like such a dick, Ilse.”

“Well, that’s a start I guess.”

I chuckled a bit and found myself continuing, the words I didn’t even know I was thinking coming out softly. “But he just left me, Ilse. Didn’t try to talk about it and ran off. I know I hurt him, and I know he was mad but… the things he said hurt me too. And then he just left. Told me I was never going to be loved back and just left. I know I ruined things and I know he won’t forgive me and I don’t deserve forgiveness but, I thought.” Ilse rubbed little circles in my back, urging me to continue when the words felt like they were trying to choke me. “We were each other’s everything for so long. He was the reason I woke up some mornings. He was my inspiration. He was the only person in the world I thought still understood me. I think I just expected for someone like that not to leave your life just like that. And to leave it so angry and so empty.”

Ilse didn’t say anything, just stayed there, holding me in the way I didn’t know I needed. I wasn’t sure how long we stayed like that, rocking ever so slightly on her couch, until she said, in a voice much gentler than I had ever known her to speak. “I think you deserve forgiveness, Ernst. Yeah, you fucked up but, you deserve forgiveness. I think you deserve forgiveness from yourself too.”

I didn’t realize she was crying too until i pulled away and saw her pale cheeks flushed unusually pink. “Thank you, Ilse.”

She just nodded, running a hand through my unruly waves before excusing herself to set up a bed for me on the couch. 

I stayed at Ilse and Martha’s for a few nights. Just trying to wrap my mind around going back and seeing the hollowed out apartment Max had left behind. No one talked about him while I was there. We just talked about music and movies and anything else that came to mind. During the days I would wander out to the art supply store a few blocks from their apartment and pick up just enough to busy myself. Martha gave me permission to use their balcony as a makeshift studio. 

I didn’t make anything of real substance. But I made a lot. Paintings I didn’t even know I wanted to paint found themselves on my canvases, welcoming me home and reminding me just how much I needed to create in order to stay sane. 

Of course, I didn’t enjoy how cold it was out there but, I made do. I was happy to just be back to myself. 

When I felt I could go back to my own apartment, Ilse called me a cab and kissed my cheek goodbye, telling me I was always welcome.

The apartment felt a bit better than when I first found it. It still felt strange, but not crushing. The emptiness cake and went but it was no longer the ever expanding cavern I had walked into a few days prior. I stacked my newest paintings in the corner where Max’s guitar had been and filled his half of the closet with the clothes I unpacked. By the time I was done, it was almost as if he was never even there. And it was almost as if I was never in pain.

I realized that my mailbox must’ve been overflowing the night I returned and rushed downstairs to check it. Max had been checking it when I was gone,sorting my letters from his and leaving them for me in a neat pile on the dining room table. But since he had left, the box had filled up. Some letters for him, some for me. Mostly junk mail, catalogs and credit card offers. But a small, cream colored envelope caught my attention, lovingly marked for ‘Mr. Ernst Robel and Mr. Max Von Trenk’ from ‘Hanschen Rilow and Greta Brandenburg’.

It was weird to read his name again, to remember that he was here, in this city, probably going on like nothing had happened. I knew what it was before opening the envelope but I still pulled it open with anticipation sitting sick in my stomach.

‘Kindly join us for the wedding of 

Greta Alice Brandenburg   
and   
Hanschen August Rilow

Saturday, the eleventh of May two-thousand and two at 4 in the afternoon  
at the Paramount Country Club   
60 Zukor Road  
New City, New York

Reception to follow’

I didn’t hesitate to throw it directly into the trashcan and go back to my business like I hadn’t even seen it.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's good, this chapter took forever to write because I was in holiday panic and also the panic of making it good because this whole thing is almost over and holy s h I t.
> 
> also, I'm dropping out of school to pursue art so,,,,,, Ernst is feeling more like a self insert by the day

I honestly could not tell you how Melchior talked me into attending that wedding.

It came up during one of our phone calls, which were happening more and more frequently as the weeks drew on. It felt a bit like when we were in school, except with the crying of newborn Moritz in the background and our discussions drifting towards work and family instead of homework and whether or not to skip math. 

I was happy to speak to him again. After Ilse, Martha and Anna moved to Los Angeles, he became the closest thing I had to a ‘best friend’. I had heard that that sort of thing goes away as you get older, but I never thought it would happen to me.

Melchior though, was ernest. He never beat around the bush or sugar coated his thoughts. And when he managed to escape from the kids for a few minutes and found time to call me, he was always straight forward. He didn’t try to hide the fact that he worried about me. And I could understand why. 

“Anything from our friend Mr. Rilow?” He asked early March, a week or two after I had settled into the lonesome life. 

I smiled a bit. He tried his hardest to remain neutral on the entire ordeal, but there was a hint of bitterness in his voice as he said his name. “Actually, yes,” I sighed, trying to remember the invitation. “It was an invite to the wedding. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Takes some balls to pull that sorta stunt,” Melchior agreed. I could hear tiny feet run down the hallway that lead to his office. “Well, are you going?”

I laughed at first, assuming it was some sort of joke. “Fuck no! You couldn’t pay me. I never want to see his face again!” When Melchior didn’t laugh back, I realized he had been serious. My tone dropped. “Melchi, why would I want to go to their wedding?”

“A closure sort of thing,” I scoffed as he spoke, prompting him to continue more urgently. “Ernst, are you telling me you don’t need anything else? You were fucking in love with this dude for years and he just walked out the door, left a message on your machine, and you’re fine with leaving things where they lay?”

I shrugged. “Not much else I could do. What do you expect me to do? Chase after him so I can have my fade to credits ending? I don’t think that’s how shit works.”

“No but you deserve it, Ernst.”

I relented after about an hour of back and forth between Melchior and I. But even then, some part of me believed that it wouldn’t actually happen. The day would come and go and I would stay home, content in just forgetting about Hanschen like I had before.

But the day came and, to my surprise, I found myself in the passenger seat of Melchior’s rental car. I had been making excuses the entire ride upstate, that I never RSVP’ed and that they were expecting me and Max, not me and Melchior, and that the invitation was probably an error anyway. Melchior, who was still jet lagged from the previous day’s flight, didn’t seem to care. Exhausted, he just continued to drive through the hills, further and further from the city.

Still not that far. Far enough that I could abandon ship at any time if I really meant it. Melchior assured me that the minute we pulled into the already full parking lot. And when I told him I wanted to abandon ship then and there, he rolled his eyes and said “For Christ-sake, Ernst.”

That was the end of that conversation, him locking the car behind us as we walked across the parking lot, hands in pockets. We walked towards the large, stone country club that sat in a sea of green grass and lush green trees. Around the grounds, elegant guests in expensive suits and dresses chatted and giggled, the sound of a small string band becoming louder and louder as we approached the back of the building. 

That’s where the ceremony was set up, what must’ve been over a hundred white chairs set up facing a set of ancient stone garden walls built into a small grass hill. Among them was the white wedding arch, decorated with sprigs of lavender and forget-me-nots and lily of the valley. It was all so beautiful and picturesque, peering out over seemingly endless fairytale green hills. 

I could tell this was all Greta’s doing. Everything from the path made of white petals to the little chalkboard sign reading ‘Sit anywhere, we’ll all be family soon’ in calligraphy. Hanschen’s touch would never be as feather light and elegant as Greta’s. 

Melchior and I, almost wordlessly, sat in the furthest back seats possible. There, we spoke in whispers awaited for the ceremony to begin. Melchior seemed cool and content, leaning back in his seat and tiling his chin up to soak in the May sunlight. His strong, low voice was crooning and quiet, muttering about how nice the weather was and the girls getting out of school soon. My theme of not belonging was still going strong though. Beside Melchior’s pressed grey suit and meticulously placed waves of brown and grey, I felt like a daddy long-legs spider that someone shoved into a dress shirt. I realized that the blazer I wore that I thought was black was actually a dark purple on the ride there. Melchior had talked me down from worrying about it like he had talked me down from everything else.

When all the other seats filled up around us, he reached out to touch my knee. “You’re shaking like this was your wedding, Ernst,” He almost chuckled. I tried to smile back, to prove that I was at the epitome of ease. But my shaking leg betrayed me again and moved like I was about to get up and run all the way back home. And I was debating listening to that urge when the music began. The string band swelling from silence to a flowing, handsome waltz, the muttered conversations around us went silent, everyone turned to try to catch a glimpse at the soon to be married couple.

“Ernst!” Melchior hissed, breaking me from my trance-like state of anxiety. I didn’t even realize until he spoke that I was moving as if to stand. His strong hand on my shoulder pulled me back to my seat and back into reality. “What the hell, man?”

His voice was soft, but fiery, accompanied my hazel eyes staring me down. My voice came out shaky as I responded, “Listen, Melchi, I’m abandoning ship. I wanna fucking go!”

“You’re not going anywhere, smartass,” His hissed words ended our mini whisper fight. “I didn’t fly across the country to have you make a scene and leave before anyone’s even walked down the aisle.”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t ask for him to fly out here and I never wanted to be here in the first place, but his glare told that if I said that he would just call me stubborn and shush me like the small child I felt like. 

I was able to watch a few moments of the wedding procession, long enough to see a noble looking priest walk down the path of petals. But I only caught a split second glance at the blond hair of the groom following him before I looked down, choosing instead to study the grass beneath my oxfords. From the corner of my eye I saw their feet walk past us. The little baby blue heels of the bridesmaids, the cane of Mr. Brandenburg as he walked along the long, trailing white dress of his daughter. 

It wasn’t until Melchior nudged me that I looked up. “Our favorite enlightened, trendy queen sticking with a white dress and all female bridesmaids. Did she learn nothing in fashion school?”

I smiled a bit and nodded. He had never met Greta, but he remembered everything I had said about her. It was nice to know he was really trying to make me feel better.

But that feeling was fleeting, disappearing when I looked back to the arch and saw the entire wedding party, lined up in slick black suits and powder blue dresses. I looked anywhere besides at Hanschen. At all of the faces I didn’t recognize. His best man, the pack of groomsmen, even the little pink faced ring bearer and flower girl, neither of which were above the age of six. I didn’t know a single person standing up there besides Greta, Hanschen, and his two round face sisters standing to Greta’s side. I hadn’t seen them in so long, I had forgotten which one was which. But the one I suspected was Melitta had a small stomach bulging with pregnancy.

Hanschen had all this life and I knew none of it. Some part of me had assumed that I played as large of a role in his life as he did in mine. We had discussed my family, he knew all my friends. But only then, as I looked onto the herd of grinning, handsome young men flanking his side, did I realize that he never once told me about his friends. The best man, wearing a sprig of lavender on his lapel, pulled Hanschen into a tight bear hug before allowing him to turn back to Greta. He smiled at Hanschen with such love and happiness, I wondered how they knew each other, how they met, what his name was, and if Hanschen ever told him why he moved out to California for over a month. 

But I didn’t have time to think on that too long. Not when I saw Hanschen turn to Greta and smile like the sun had some out for the first time in years. Tearyeyed, Greta smiled back. It felt so much like a fairytale. So perfect, so beautiful, and as the priest began to speak in a low tone “Welcome, and thank you all for joining us for this joyous occasion. Together, we are gathered here to witness a truly special ceremony: the union of Hanschen and Greta before God….”

It all flowed right past me, like a stream of water falling on my skin and running off. I heard no words, at least I didn’t register any. I was busy, my eyes tracing the outline of the dozen beautiful strangers, all smiling. They all seemed so happy, so grateful, so filled to the brim with love for the couple joining hands and illuminating the afternoon with their joy. 

None of them knew me, none of them cared to meet me. They all lived in ignorance, the building blocks to Hanschen’s precious life that I knew nothing of. I held no significance to him, not like the pretty procession with strawberry lipped smiles and soft, PhD eyes that watched and nodded when the priest spoke of marriage as a “profound, sincere commitment, and one worthy of our reverence.”

I tried to focus on my breathing after I exhausted the faces of the wedding party. Staring at the back of the head of the older woman behind me, I inhaled for five seconds, exhaled for six, then seven, then eight. The counting let me avoid looking at Hanschen for a while. But it became inevitable, as I heard his voice for the first time in months saying the words “I do”. I looked at him and tried to remember the last words I heard him speak. Something “like goodbye” or “sorry”, or a “goodbye” that felt like a “sorry”. He looked amazing, like how he always looked. His blond hair was pushed up out of his face, pairing with the brilliant blue eyes that gave him the James Dean look that entranced me when I was a teenager. He smiled, eager and bright, making me wonder if he ever smiled at me like that. I couldn’t remember if he did. The smiles I remembered from him were always subdued, shy, contemplative, like he was smiling at the idea of me more than he was at me. But there was no hiding in this. Now, he seemed to be relieved. 

Melchior reached out to me again as the couple kissed, placing his hand over mine and halting my jittery fingers that had been tapping at my dress pants. I didn’t even realize I had been squeezing my eyes shut until I opened them to look down to my knee, watch his fingertips press into my knuckles, calming me without any words or motions. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding and joined the rest of the crowd in applause, the priest’s voice booming above our cheers “Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Rilow!”

“I want to fucking go!”

“It’s rude to leave before dinner!”

“It’s rude to invite your ex to your wedding!”

Melchior took a sip of the lavender lemonade cocktail that had been served to us in a mason jar and grimaced before setting it back on the table we were sitting at. “There’s about a teaspoon of alcohol in that,” He mused before looking back to me and seeing my expression of anger unwavering. “Jesus, Ernst, the worst part is over. Now it’s just free food.”

“No. Now it’s sitting and pretending to enjoy being here with about a hundred strangers!” I gestured to the rest of the crowd standing around the large hall. Like Melchior and me, they seemed about as uncomfortable as they could be, arms crossed as they sipped the cocktail and nibbled on the hors d'oeuvres being served by tired looking waiters. They all sat in the in between of the ceremony and dinner, waiting for Hanschen and Greta to come and greet them. But the pair were moving slowly and separately around the hall, shaking hands and exclaiming greetings. 

“Hey, at least you know the bride,” Melchior looked back to the lemonade and took another, slightly desperate sip, “I wasn’t even invited.” He offered the jar out to me. But I shook my hand, holding up the beer that I had been nursing, and he continued with a sigh. “Listen, man, we’ll leave after dinner, okay?”

“Sure thing, Mel,” I nodded and muttered into the mouth of my bottle. I turned to look around the room to try and spot the bride and groom. I saw Hanschen immediately, greeting a group of young looking couples with giggles and side hugs. 

I was just about to look for Greta when I heard her voice from beside me, making me jump a bit as she exclaimed. “Oh my God, Ernst! It’s so good to see you.”

I looked up from my seat and saw Greta, beautiful and ethereal in her gorgeous, form fitting lace gown. As she spoke all I saw were long eyelashes that fluttered to her cheeks and her hair pushed up into intricate, flower woven braids. She was so perfect, so bubbly, so feminine.

“Ernst, I’m so happy you came!” She squealed, pulling me up to my feet and into a hug. She was loving and welcoming, letting out a little sigh of joy. “How are you? I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages!” She let go of the hug and looked over to Melchior, her eyes bright expression suddenly dropping when she noticed it wasn’t Max. But she picked the smile right back up quickly to hide any confusion. “Oh. Hi, have we met?”

“Not yet, I don’t think,” He looked just like he did in high school, extending a hand to Greta and flashing the smile that caught so many girls in his trap before. “I’m Melchior Gabor. I went to school with Ernst and Hanschen.”

“Nice to meet you, Melchior,” She giggled, a bit of a blush coming to her cheeks. I almost felt the need to remind them both that they were married. But Greta let her eyes drop quickly, moving to look back to me with a little school girl sigh still in her voice. “Is Max doing well? I wish he could have made it.”

Clearing my voice, I threw together a shaky sentence. “Oh, umm… We broke up a few months ago. He’s moved to Los Angeles, I think. I’m not too sure.”

Her smile immediately fell, throwing together a frown of uncomfortable knowing and trying to repair the conversation. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry, dear! That must be awfully tough…” She looked anywhere else in the room for a moment or so. “Well, I hope you’re doing well! I assume the art business is going well?” When I nodded, she continued, her tone picking back up as she went. “That’s so good! You know, there are some people here you really need to meet. They just love your work. I was thinking of hosting another party after the honeymoon and I would just love to have some of your stuff-”

“Greta,” Her constant flow of words suddenly halted against the pressure of my solid, calm tone. With a deep breath, I started to say the script I had been rehearsing with Melchior in the car. “Listen, I am honestly very grateful for what you have done for me. You have catapulted me much further than I ever thought I would be and I owe all of my success to you but…” I rubbed my forehead and attempted to put the words together. “I don’t think I can maintain a relationship with you. As friends or as coworkers or whatever.”

A little frown made her doll face look tragic. She masqued her confusion well. “Oh, well…” Nervous hands played with the lace sleeves of her dress. “Is something wrong? I really did love having you around. And it was so nice to see Hans have an old friend from school.”

“I don’t want a friendship with Hans either,” I glanced quickly at Melchior, who was watching with serious eyes like a scientist conducting an experiment. “Thank you so much, Greta. And congratulations on your marriage and you look beautiful and radiant but…” I shrugged. It was all I could do before saying to her, in the softest voice I could. “I think I’m going to be moving on. Back to California, that is. New life sorta thing.” 

Her confused expression let out into understanding as he spoke, her voice still masquerading with a chuckle. “Oh, I suppose everybody’s gotta do that at least once. Especially after everything that’s happened this last year.”

A few mutterings of agreement, and she hugged me. It really felt like a goodbye hug as she squeezed me tightly. “Best of luck to you, Ernst.”

“You too, Greta,” Then, after a brief pause. “I mean it.”

And I really did. She smiled at Melchior and I before leaving, approaching the next group with a few cheers of greeting. “The easy one’s done,” Melchior said with a proud nod and took another sip of the lemonade. “Good luck with the white whale though.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, almost giggle, as I sat beside him. “Moby Rilow.” There was a bit of relief, but still some anxious energy knotting and twisting at my stomach. Before, it had been hibernating, constant nervousness that came in waves throughout the day. But now, I could practically feel it building as I looked across the hall to see Hanschen hugging an older couple and thanking them for coming. I wondered if he even noticed I was there. 

“I was thinking Hanschen Dick but yours works too.”

He obviously noticed me by dinner, when he approached me after the cheesy cake cutting ceremony and tapped me on the shoulder. Without even looking, I knew it was him, and nodded when his low voice whispered. “Would you like to go on a quick walk, Ernst?”

The knots of anxiety began to unravel as I got up from my seat and followed him through the open glass door and onto the porch.


	23. Chapter 23

“It’s beautiful out here.”

Hanschen didn’t turn to look at me immediately. For a moment or so, he stayed where he was as if I hadn’t said a thing. His nervous hands gripped at the railing of the side porch he had me follow him to. It was quaint and old, like the rest of the venue, overlooking what seemed to be a giant valley of green. Just beyond the crest of a far off hill, the sun turned all sorts of orange and pink as it set. 

When he did look at me, it was slow. He looked over his shoulder first,making sure it was me before turning completely and taking me all in. “Let’s go on a walk, Ernst.” He practically repeated what he had said inside after his gaze looked me up and down like he did that day in his apartment, when I was sure I had dreamed him up.

I nodded and followed him again, this time side by side as we walked down the wooden steps and onto the stone path that looped around the country club. We walked for maybe a minute in silence, our hands in our pockets until Hanschen spoke up. “So, what are you going to do with the house?” he asked, his eyes cast to the ground he was walking on and his expensive leather shoes. 

I almost felt like laughing. Months of not speaking and that was all he had to say? Like we were back in California enjoying coffee and the conversation of “What did you do today?”. But when I saw the solemn look on his unusually pale face, I allowed it. It seemed like he was struggling far more than I had ever seen him struggle before. 

“I think I’ll figure that out once I get back from Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Texas,” I confirmed, kicking a pebble out from under my shoe and further down the path. “My dad wants me to come out for a while. As long as I need to. He thinks I need to get out of the city.”

Hanschen huffed a bit, a little smile on his face. “You’re speaking to your father?”

I nodded, turning my head to see Hanschen walking beside me, his eyes cast to the ground and his features exaggerated by the early evening shadows. The orange of the sky made his hair look like it was made of flames, strands of it falling down into his face just like it always had. I could almost see him looking down at the book on his desk, his glasses on the tip of his nose, back when he was just ‘New Kid’ to me. 

“That’s good.” He tucked a loose blond hair behind his ear only to have it escape a few moments later. “So you’re not heading back to California?”

As he spoke, we stopped alongside a little pond on the property. I hadn’t realized how far we walked until I looked back and saw the country club yards away, the sound of people talking and music playing becoming a faint hum. He looked out at the cotton candy sky, still insisting to avoid eye contact. It felt like we were seventeen again, passing notes and trading books, not looking at each other out of the fear that we would lose control of the feelings we didn’t understand. “I wouldn’t want to be alone out there. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Max wouldn’t….?”

His words sputtered out. I think he saw me shift, looking down at the ground and clearing my throat before speaking, quiet and strained. “Yeah… He’s left. Pretty sure he moved to Los Angeles.”

Hanschen, still looking out at the small man made pond filled with croaking frogs and algae, began to gnaw at his bottom lip. One hand nervously fiddled with his cufflinks. “Why’d he-”

“Would you stay if you were him?”

“You told him?”

I looked up and saw he was finally looking at me. My face this time, into my eyes with a look of desperation that I wish I could explain. “Yes,” I said, making a note to try and look him in the eye but being defeated by his fluttering baby blues moving quickly back to the landscape. “I can’t hurt him like that. I had to-”

“You’re bad at keeping secrets.”

I opened my mouth to begin a fight, with venom on my tongue and anger in my inhale. But I paused, and watched his nervous fingers press against his lips. I had never seen him so small. So I exhaled, saying each word as carefully as I could. “Guilty conscious I guess.” Then, as hanschen’s shoulders shrugged and his hands were shoved into his pockets, I found myself continuing. “I don’t think I could live with someone and lie to them everytime I say anything.”

It wasn’t an accident saying this. But when he looked at me, suddenly whipping his head around, he looked as if he expected me to take it back. Or that I had never spoken at all. But I just looked back, unapologetic and unwavering. The look he returned was knowing, guilty, almost childlike. It was like I had uncovered the dirty little secret he had been hiding in plain sight. 

“Melchi is probably wondering where I am,” I said after a few moments of staring. 

My cue to go was read and understood. Hanschen nodded, swallowing nervously before saying. “Well, good luck with Texas.”

“Good luck with Greta.”

I looked at him for a few more moments. How he nodded his head at nothing, how his eyes seemed locked on a little patch of grass, how his jaw clenched as if he was holding back from screaming. He looked like a man standing on the ledge, contemplating whether to jump or not. I just couldn’t tell you what it was that he was jumping into.

I decided that I didn’t care. I had found the closure that Melchior talked about. And even if I hadn’t, I didn’t care to. So I went to leave, my hands in my pockets and a soft hum to a tune I couldn’t quite recall on my breath. And I would have left too, if it weren’t for Hanschen’s voice, speaking clearly and crisply with a confidence I thought had disappeared. 

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. I think I made you up inside my head.”

I couldn’t help but sigh, reaching up to rub my temple as I stopped walking and just listened. I wondered how many times he would have to do this until it became a joke. He paused just to hear my footsteps stop and continued, a bit quieter now. “The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”

This is when I turned, my arms crossed over my chest as I watched him. He looked out over the countless hills, but his eyes were alive, lit up as he spoke. “I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. I think I made you up inside my head.” His eyes were so filled with sparks, it was as if he was looking into the past. Into two boys racing up a hill with their hearts pounding. Into passed notes and shared glances. Into a life they thought was laid out before them, together. 

“God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”

He slowed, becoming more contemplative. As I watched, his eyes fluttered closed, as if under the command of the poets words. It seemed almost as if he would have been content with me leaving, walking away, as if these words were for him and him alone. “I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name.” His eyes shot open, almost fearful. Like he had seen something he wished he hadn’t in his own mind. “ I think I made you up inside my head...”

I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know him for seventeen years of my life because, in that moment, he felt like everything. He stared out into the ever expanding green and I wondered how my life had gone on before it was plagued by Hanschen Rilow. And if it could continue without the thought of him constantly in my mind. 

“I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.I think I made you up inside my head.”

His breathing was heavy, as if the words had made him wake up in a cold sweat. I watched his previously still fingers begin to wriggle restlessly with his cufflinks. “When do you have time to memorize all of this poetry?” I asked. The air around us suddenly shifted. He looked at me as if he thought I was gone. “First the Byron. Now…?”

“Plath,” he confirmed, still a bit shaken. I smiled at the name. I thought of it written on the book I gave Hanschen. If I remembered enough, I could recall that she used to be my favorite. But I think Hanschen had kept that in his mind. “It keeps me sane. Gives me something to love.”

“What about Greta?” 

I asked the question that had been floating between us, a fragile and terrifying question that seemed to walk the snapped wire from my mind to Hanschen’s. He let out a long, heavy breath. “I love her.” He spoke simply, shrugging a bit as he stated what seemed to be the only thing his mind could come up with. 

I continued on my acquisition, taking a few steps closer as I asked, “Do you love her?”

The pause spoke for Hanschen. He shifted his weight, his shiny new shoes catching the dying light. But even though the pause had replied to my question with a sturdy ‘no’, he still spoke, seeming to search for words as he said them. He looked to the hills as if the right thing to say was out there laying the grass like we were once. “She loves me.”

“And you love her because of that?” He nodded. I wished for a moment that Greta wee there to hear this. To see her new husband speak the truth for what must’ve been the first time in his life. But then, I wished that she was far far away. Somewhere where he couldn’t find her and his words couldn’t hurt her. No matter what happened, she didn’t deserve that. “That’s need. That’s not love.”

“Maybe it isn’t.” As he agreed, his gaze moved to the floor. He rocked on his heels for a moment before looking up at me, into my eyes this time. He spoke suddenly, the word seeming to fumble from his mouth in a rehearsed fury. “Stay.”

It was a statement. Not a question, not a hopeful whisper, but a demand. A demand he made with poor, pleading blue eyes. I was immediately thrown back in time, into the same conversation we had eight years ago. When the same eyes looked at me and the same voice begged. “Stay,” He repeated. “I’ll get you an apartment nearby. I’ll come by every day. We won’t have to leave each other’s lives aga-”

“Greta.”

Her name shook her for a moment, his eyes flicking away before coming back. “She won’t know.”

He proposed it like how I proposed our train ride away, hopeful but desperate. I finally understood how he felt that day when I came to his dorm with tickets in hand. “I can’t do that to her,” I said, my hands coming up in a defense and he took more steps toward me, moving to close the distance. “I don’t keep secrets. I don’t lie. Not to myself or to her or to anyone. I got done with that when I was a kid.”

“Ernst, I need-”

“You need this,” He was close, so close that when I looked into his eyes I saw nothing else around us. It felt like I was back in his dorm, sparse and unpacked, as he begged to hold me like he used to. I wondered if things would have been different if I let him. If I curled into that little twin bed with him and let him hold me close and stayed in our precious little lie. “You need this life. The wedding and the wife and the nine to five and the dog and the litter of kids and the house. People like me don’t get those things.”

He let out a shaky breath and I felt his hand move to cradle my ribs. The other moved up to my cheek, touching me so gently, like I was made of glass. I let him look at me for a moment, touch me with quivering breaths escaping his lips. Then, the distance was closed by his body crashing into mine. The embrace was almost violent, him pulling me against him with the desperation of a dying man. I found myself returning the embrace without thinking, wrapping my arms around his back in a way that felt so natural it was strange to think that we hadn’t held each other like this in years. I felt his head on my shoulder, his lips pressing to my neck before he buried his face in the fabric of my shirt. I felt his chest heave with labored breaths as his hand reached up to stroke my hair. 

For a moment, it was a relief. To feel him and know his love. My fingers pressed into his back, pressing him closer. “I need you.” He said into my collar, his voice so slight it would have gone unnoticed if it was not whispered into my ear. 

“Then leave.”

My words made him tense, his fingers pausing their hopeless entangling of my hair and his breathing halting suddenly. He didn’t speak for a moment. Just stood rigid in my arms for a few more futile moments before stepping back. He looked at me, searching my face and practically begging for me to say I was joking. But I remained solemn, staring back at him with expectant eyes and waiting for him to speak.

When he finally did, his voice was stifled with a mixture of a chuckle and a mumble, like he had hoped to me misheard. “Ernst… I…”

“You need her more,” When Hanschen didn’t correct me, I took my step away, finally completely out of his touch. I could feel the warmth of his hand slip away, being tucked back to his side like it never left. He swallowed and looked to the ground, nodding to himself as he tried to right himself with the ways of this reality. I watched but not for long. It was too painful to watch him crumble like that. “Someone’s gonna come looking for you.”

“Suppose you’re right.”

He stuffed his hands back into the pockets of his coat. The Hanschen the world now knew was back, stoic and stiff lipped as his eyes moved back to me, but not my face. “You’re talking to your dad right?”

“You can’t keep stalling, Hans-”

“You tell him everything?”

After the shock of his question, I replied, stepping further away as I did. The eight year long waltz had stopped and the dance floor was clearing. “Almost everything.”

He nodded, a hint of a smile on his face. This drew up to a larger, content smile as he spoke. It didn’t last long, but it was beautiful for a second or two. “That’s… That’s good. I’m glad. I wish I could have done the same.” When his statement was met with a confused look, he continued, his face falling and his eyes moving back to the hillside, now with the sun almost vanished behind it. “He passed away last year. In June. Liver failure. He wasn’t a drunk or anything, just after mom left…” He stopped himself as his voice tensed, the tears of still fresh regret reminding him they were looking to escape. 

“I’m so sorry to hear, Hanschen.” I tried to imagine Mr. Rilow, the round faced, pleasant man with a balding head of blond hair that served me ice cream for years. Who checked out pounds of candy and never said a word when he saw a boy stick a piece or two into his pocket. The rubble of the news settled and I spoke again. “God, I didn’t know that-”

“I just wanted you to have what I didn’t,” He didn’t look away from the hills, now silhouettes of what they were in the light. 

“I don’t have much of anything else now,” I looked to the hills too. It was the bows before the dance hall emptied. “What was that poem called?”

His head snapped back to look at me, his brow furrowed with question briefly. Then, upon remembering and recovering from my sudden shift of subject, he replied. “Mad Girl’s Love Song, I think.”

I nodded. The silence between us wasn’t awkward. It never was. “You can’t keep quoting poetry too me and expecting me to fall into your arms.”

“Worked before.”

“I’m not seventeen anymore.”

Hanschen’s eyes never left the orange setting sun. He looked on at the watercolor sky, far from the city made of red lights he called home and I called my past. “I’ll always love you like a teenager.”

He meant what he said, I could hear it in the heaviness of his words, the exactness. The fact that I had never heard him say it. In his own words, not the words of some long dead writer. It took this long for him to tell me what I’ve known since the day we first rode to the pond, and his steady hands taught me to skip rocks.

The same hand wore a wedding ring now. I am the past. I am the empty alleyways and the closing doors. 

“I hope you learn to love better.”

One last glance to the valley and I left. Hanschen didn’t stop me and I realized I didn’t want him to. He just kept his eyes on the horizon like he always had, watching a permanently setting sun.


	24. Chapter 24

“What happened?” Were the first words out of Melchior when I came back to his side. He had been standing with his back against the wall, hands in his pockets and his eyes watching the various servers finish pushing the tables to the edge of the dance floor. “We’re at a wedding but you look like a funeral march.”

“I want to go,” Was all I said, looking around the hall to try to find Greta of Hanschen anywhere. I had taken a walk through the golf course before returning to Melchior, looking up at the shining Hudson stars. I had forgotten the beauty of a clear night sky, only a glowing yellow half moon to light my path along the green. I didn’t look back to see if Hanschen had gone back, but I assumed that if the groom was missing, there would be more panic than there was. But for now, the guests were at ease, sipping their drinks and making hushed small talk under the ambient music of the string band. 

Melchior understood almost immediately. He hadn’t asked any questions when I got up to follow Hanschen and he didn’t ask any questions now. He just nodded, standing upright and muttering. “Alright.”

I nodded, turning towards the door back to the parking lot when the string music suddenly halted and was replaced by the quiet tinking of piano keys through the speakers set up around us. The lights dimmed as the crowd began to clap, all besides Melchior and I, who looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

“Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Just like me, they long to be close to you.”

As the women’s soft voice sang over the speakers, two figures emerged from opposite sides of the dance floor to meet in the middle. Greta, still draped in the luxurious white gown, was glowing with smiles as she leaned effortlessly into Hanschen’s arms, just as I had.

“Okay, let’s go,” Melchior whispered to me, nudging my side with his elbow. 

Hanschen and Greta began to dance, a slow, rocking dance. She laid her head on his shoulder, looking so small and protected in his big arms. “Ernst?” Melchior asked when I didn’t look away from his pair. 

“Why do stars fall down from the sky every time you walk by?Just like me, they long to be close to you.”

I watched them closely. How she leaned into him. How his cheek rested against her head. The soft smile on her lips like she knew something I didn’t. I couldn’t help but find myself remembering Hanschen’s room, the trophies on the wall and the turntable in the corner. The record spinning. I wondered if he held me like that. If his eyes fluttered closed like they were now. If we were as beautiful. 

“If it gets too much, we can go,” Melchior’s voice came back into my ear. He was much calmer now, understanding. He had seen how I stared. He knew what had happened. 

“On the day that you were born the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true”

Then the chain reaction of memories came. Like dominos, as I thought of one, another came to my mind. Things I had forgotten, assuming they were dreams or nightmares. I saw Hanschen with his head bowed, looking at his book in economics and acting as if he hadn’t thrown the note at me. I saw the arms that were holding Greta pull back to throw a little pebble across the surface of the cove. Where he talked of stars and love and the beauty of the world I assumed hated me. I saw how he had kissed me with the lips he pressed to her forehead. How warm he was in the freezing cold. How warm the hands were that cupped my cheeks, now holding her pale hand like it was made of crystals. And she glimmered like it too. 

“So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue.”

He span her, the beautiful white fabric spinning fluidly around her ankles. She looked at him with so much love. Memories were running through her mind too. Memories of him, years and years of memories. Much more than I could ever have. And she didn’t remember them hiding. Or him leaving, or the shame of silence. 

She had won. 

“That is why all the girls in town follow you all around.”

It felt childish, but I imagined myself as Greta. With my hand on his shoulder and his on my waist as we beamed up to one another. Would he smile at me the way he did at her? Would he love me the same as he did when we were kids?

But I could only imagine. Even if we could, even if we were in the universe where the planets aligned and the world righted itself for us. I could never be the one on that dancefloor, pulling him tight. Hanschen could never go without lying. He could never love without keeping up appearances.

Maybe Max was right. He couldn’t love me in the way I wanted and keep his world from falling apart.

Max was always right.

“Just like me, they long to be close to you.”

“Let’s go.”

Melchior took a step toward me after I didn’t move, my eyes still glued to the couple. I felt his hand on my shoulder and I finally looked away. The image of Hanschen stayed in my mind as we walked out to his car, smiling at Greta like she was made of gold. His saving grace.

No matter how many times he left me or I left him, I knew he wouldn’t do that to her. Even if he couldn’t love her, he would never leave her like he did to me. Keep his secrets secret, keep her out of harm's way.

And even if he did love me like he said, he would never stay.

I closed the door on the faint sound of trumpets and the woman’s humming vocalization. Melchior seemed to have a silent understanding, driving off into the night in silence. 

It was strange not to miss him. It felt like I should have, but I couldn’t miss him. Now that I knew the rules of the game he played, all I could feel was relief that I had grown out of having my heart stuck on Hanschen Rilow.

Melchior leaned over to turn on the radio a few minutes into the drive. Still wordless, he clicked it on and I immediately recognized the singer’s whining voice and the melancholic guitars echoing behind him. On an instinct, my hand shot out to turn it off. But before my finger could reach the power button, I stopped. Almost like I had pulled all my muscle’s taunt and I was hanging there, a puppet with no more string left. 

I hadn’t heard Max’s voice in so long. And never over a recording. It almost didn’t sound like him. But I was sure it was as he sighed out some angry, grungy lyrics about love and how everything goes wrong. I remembered sitting in the back of venues, listening to the exact same words, and wondering how I ever got so lucky.

“He’s good,” Melchior admitted. 

Shrugging, I responded. “ Yeah.” I found myself watching the radio like it would give me an answer. All the faint green screen said was “98.5 ALT”. 

I could only imagine how happy he was. How many people were hearing the lyrics he wrote, the band he formed. And I was happy too. Happy that he had finally made it. After eight straight years of late nights and horrible crowds and scams and bad pay and long tours with no reward.

I never would have thought this day would come and I wouldn’t be there to celebrate with him.

“Are you going to get back with him, you think?” Melchior asked, as if reading my mind. I looked over at him and even though his eyes were on the road, he was smiling. 

“No,” I shook my head and leaned back in my seat, letting my hand drop and my body relax for the first time in what felt like years. “I’m done digging up high school relics, Melchi.”

I think I was smiling too. Because soon, we were both laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's kinda funny that I posted the first chapter of Life in Your Shape almost exactly one year ago and today I'm posting the last chapter of this beast. Anyway, I hope y'all liked reading this because I loved writing it. This fic has kinda felt like my baby for the last year and even though almost everything in my life has changed since I began writing it, this story has always been a constant for me. Thank you for reading a whole year in my life.

**Author's Note:**

> Read the first part 'A Life in Your Shape' (or don't, it's whatever) HERE https://archiveofourown.org/works/17390153?view_full_work=true  
my blog is @melchixr on Tumblr


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